Saturday, 29 August 2026

88% of the 20,534 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 29 August 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,291 recorded runs, 383 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 18,144 were within five minutes, 2,253 between five and thirty minutes down, and 137 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 457 services.

Elizabeth line came closest to running to time, 98.8% of its 656 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 18.9%.

A weekend timetable, so the 25,291 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 20,534 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,291, and the bands are exclusive. 4,374 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 3,077 runs down to Caledonian Sleeper on 3. 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 87% — 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 176 of the 383 cancellations (46.0%), 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 12m behind schedule — Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street, booked away at 09:44, run by ScotRail. The ten longest range from 3h 12m down to 1h 14m, and they belong to 6 operators, ScotRail 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 04:00, when 67% of 132 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 24.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 23,476 trains on this date, made up of 2,608 individual units and 11,286 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 2,668 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 192 units.

The average train was 5.4 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 18 vehicles.

Of 25,291 runs, 23,476 had a formation published (93%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,516 buses from 150 operators were seen on this date, across 2,672,248 position reports.

125,165 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 84,854 arrived on time, 6,477 late, and 33,834 — 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 0.2 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company ran closest to time (89%), and National Express furthest from it (30%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 29 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences