Sunday, 23 August 2026

88% of the 12,964 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Sunday, 23 August 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 16,399 recorded runs, 401 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 11,457 were within five minutes, 1,420 between five and thirty minutes down, and 87 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a safety inspection of the track” was the most common explanation, given for 431 services.

Tyne and Wear Metro came closest to running to time, 100.0% of its 102 recorded arrivals; c2c had the largest cancelled share at 31.2%.

A weekend timetable, so the 16,399 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 12,964 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 16,399, and the bands are exclusive. 3,034 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

40 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 1,651 runs down to SO on 1. 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 88% and 86% — 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 264 of the 401 cancellations (65.8%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 2h 59m behind schedule — Skegness to Nottingham, booked away at 12:16, run by East Midlands Railway. The ten longest range from 2h 59m down to 59 min, and they belong to 5 operators, East Midlands Railway accounting for 3. 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 06:00, when 52% of 223 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 03:00 with 17.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,476 trains on this date, made up of 2,262 individual units and 10,049 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 1,495 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 149 units.

The average train was 5.9 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 28 vehicles.

Of 16,399 runs, 15,476 had a formation published (94%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,048 buses from 121 operators were seen on this date, across 1,964,693 position reports.

93,926 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 60,153 arrived on time, 7,077 late, and 26,696 — 28% — 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 0.1 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 (90%), and National Express furthest from it (35%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 23 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences