Wednesday, 26 August 2026

86% of the 21,878 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Wednesday, 26 August 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,411 recorded runs, 503 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 18,921 were within five minutes, 2,711 between five and thirty minutes down, and 246 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” was the most common explanation, given for 623 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 98.3% of its 606 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 9.4%.

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

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,878 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,411, and the bands are exclusive. 4,030 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 3,100 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 86% and 85% — 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 238 of the 503 cancellations (47.3%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 2h 20m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Edinburgh, booked away at 13:03, run by London North Eastern Railway. The ten longest range from 2h 20m down to 1h 41m, and they belong to 3 operators, London North Eastern Railway 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 57% of 161 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 14.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,935 trains on this date, made up of 2,893 individual units and 12,687 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 3,266 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 218 units.

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

Of 26,411 runs, 26,935 had a formation published (102%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

16,121 buses from 166 operators were seen on this date, across 2,906,332 position reports.

129,597 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 89,342 arrived on time, 6,215 late, and 34,040 — 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 0.2 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 (85%), 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 26 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences