Tuesday, 25 August 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Tuesday, 25 August 2026: 89% of the 21,918 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 279 of 26,407 were cancelled.

19,545 of the 21,918 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.6 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

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

Even so, 171 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 18:22 London Waterloo to Weybridge, which arrived 4h 22m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” (506 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,918 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,407, and the bands are exclusive. 4,210 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

37 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 3,105 runs down to LS on 8. 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 89% and 88% — 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 143 of the 279 cancellations (51.3%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 4h 22m behind schedule — London Waterloo to Weybridge, booked away at 18:22, run by South Western Railway. The ten longest range from 4h 22m down to 1h 34m, and they belong to 4 operators, South Western Railway accounting for 4. 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 00:00, when 47% of 184 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 16.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,940 trains on this date, made up of 2,869 individual units and 12,586 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 3,360 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 219 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 26,407 runs, 26,940 had a formation published (102%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

16,096 buses from 163 operators were seen on this date, across 2,912,268 position reports.

128,266 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 88,340 arrived on time, 6,082 late, and 33,844 — 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, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) ran closest to time (88%), 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 25 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences