Friday, 7 August 2026

26,163 passenger trains were recorded on Friday, 7 August 2026 and 426 of them were cancelled. Arrival times were not captured for most of this day, so it is a record of what ran rather than of how punctual it was.

26,163 passenger services were recorded as having been scheduled and settled on this date. Arrival times reached the archive for only 1,080 of them, so nothing is claimed here about how late the rest were — the figures below cover what ran and what did not.

Friday carries the heaviest long-distance loading of the week, and it is the day on which a late-afternoon problem has the fewest spare paths to recover into.

426 services were cancelled, 1.6% of everything booked. The reason given most often was “This service has been cancelled because of a fire next to the track”, on 140 of them. Cancellation reasons are close to complete even on days like this, and they are the operators' own wording, reproduced unedited.

Avanti West Coast lost the largest share of its own timetable, 11.7% of 383 booked runs.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 1,080 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,163, and the bands are exclusive. 24,657 trains ran without an arrival time being recorded, and nothing is claimed about how punctual those were. Delay is judged at the destination, a stricter test than the industry's own measure and not comparable with it.

By operator

38 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 3,091 runs down to TY on 4. Ordered by volume, not performance — any heading re-sorts it.

Why trains were late

8 different reasons were given for delay on this date, each reproduced in the operator's own words.

Why trains were cancelled

A reason reached the archive for 396 of the 426 cancellations (93.0%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 05m behind schedule — Liverpool Lime Street to Norwich, booked away at 15:51, run by East Midlands Railway. The ten longest range from 3h 05m down to 45 min, and they belong to 6 operators, Great Western Railway accounting for 4. What a delay on that scale usually means.

Through the day

Booked departures by hour.

The quietest was 02:00 with 13.

Buses

7,668 buses from 102 operators were seen on this date, across 298,141 position reports.

Bus punctuality was not yet being archived on this date, so only vehicle activity is shown. Nothing before that can be recovered.

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 7 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences