Sunday, 30 August 2026

89% of the 12,865 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Sunday, 30 August 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 17,220 recorded runs, 314 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 11,478 were within five minutes, 1,297 between five and thirty minutes down, and 90 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a fault with the signalling system” was the most common explanation, given for 201 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 98.0% of its 355 recorded arrivals; CrossCountry had the largest cancelled share at 7.0%.

A weekend timetable, so the 17,220 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 12,865 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 17,220, and the bands are exclusive. 4,041 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 1,766 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway 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 89% 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 199 of the 314 cancellations (63.4%), 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 30m behind schedule — Milford Haven to Manchester Piccadilly, booked away at 13:41, run by Transport for Wales. The ten longest range from 2h 30m down to 1h 11m, and they belong to 7 operators, Southeastern 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 06:00, when 55% of 222 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 28.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,180 trains on this date, made up of 2,247 individual units and 9,742 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 1,569 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 148 units.

The average train was 5.9 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 17,220 runs, 15,180 had a formation published (88%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,059 buses from 117 operators were seen on this date, across 1,936,109 position reports.

89,429 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 58,154 arrived on time, 6,655 late, and 24,620 — 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.

The average arrival was 0 minutes late, and 529 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) ran closest to time (89%), and National Express furthest from it (32%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 30 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences