Friday, 21 August 2026

Friday, 21 August 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 20,970 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 85% were within five minutes, and a further 1,032 were cancelled outright.

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.

2,770 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 291 more than half an hour, against 17,909 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 2.2 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” — 557 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,686 booked departures and an average delay of 1.6 minutes.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,970 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,060, and the bands are exclusive. 4,058 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 3,003 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 85% and 81% — 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 648 of the 1,032 cancellations (62.8%), 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 51m behind schedule — Edinburgh to Fort William, booked away at 04:50, run by Caledonian Sleeper. The ten longest range from 3h 51m down to 1h 25m, and they belong to 4 operators, Avanti West Coast accounting for 5. 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 04:00, when 59% of 162 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 12.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,590 trains on this date, made up of 2,833 individual units and 12,466 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 3,175 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 22 vehicles.

Of 26,060 runs, 26,590 had a formation published (102%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

16,517 buses from 168 operators were seen on this date, across 3,045,264 position reports.

134,348 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 91,635 arrived on time, 7,107 late, and 35,606 — 27% — 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, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) ran closest to time (84%), and National Express furthest from it (33%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 21 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences