Thursday, 20 August 2026

Thursday, 20 August 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 18,987 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 87% were within five minutes, and a further 1,240 were cancelled outright.

An ordinary weekday timetable, with the two commuter peaks that give the network most of its work and least of its slack.

2,299 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 155 more than half an hour, against 16,533 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 1.8 minutes.

The reason attached most often to a late train was “This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” — 600 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,685 booked departures and an average delay of 0.9 minutes.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 18,987 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,593, and the bands are exclusive. 5,366 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 2,960 runs down to TY on 4. Ordered by volume, not performance — any heading re-sorts it.

“On time” is of each operator's recorded arrivals; “incl. cancelled” counts a cancellation as a failure, which is what the industry's own measure does. Across the whole day they read 87% and 82% — why both are published, what each hides, and how the sort treats a small operator.

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 799 of the 1,240 cancellations (64.4%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 5h 24m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Leeds, booked away at 21:08, run by London North Eastern Railway. The ten longest range from 5h 24m down to 1h 55m, and they belong to 3 operators, London North Eastern Railway accounting for 6. What a delay on that scale usually means.

Through the day

Booked departures by hour, with the share that arrived within five minutes. Punctuality was weakest at 17:00, when 56% of 1,621 arrived within five minutes.

The filled part of each bar is the share of that hour's booked departures that arrived within five minutes. The quietest was 02:00 with 13.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,823 trains on this date, made up of 2,860 individual units and 12,560 separate vehicles. These figures cover the services an allocation was published for, not every train that ran.

25 different classes of train appeared, which is the signature of a full weekday — the long-distance fleets, the regional diesel units and the suburban electrics all working at once.

The most-used class was the 377, allocated to 3,253 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 215 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 25,593 runs, 26,823 had a formation published (105%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

16,460 buses from 160 operators were seen on this date, across 3,052,749 position reports.

132,593 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 91,554 arrived on time, 6,561 late, and 34,478 — 26% — arrived ahead of schedule.

Early arrivals are normal rather than exceptional. Bus running times carry enough slack to survive traffic, and it is concentrated in the last leg, so a clear run simply finishes sooner than booked.

Averaged across every journey, buses arrived 0.3 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (85%), and National Express furthest from it (31%).

Our figures, not the regulator's — why buses run early, the current league.

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 20 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences