Monday, 31 August 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Monday, 31 August 2026: 90% of the 20,508 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 352 of 25,031 were cancelled.

18,557 of the 20,508 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.1 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, 158 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 12:38 Bristol Temple Meads to Worcester Foregate Street, which arrived 2h 33m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” (326 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,508 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,031, and the bands are exclusive. 4,171 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 3,162 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 90% and 89% — 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 210 of the 352 cancellations (59.7%), 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 33m behind schedule — Bristol Temple Meads to Worcester Foregate Street, booked away at 12:38, run by Great Western Railway. The ten longest range from 2h 33m down to 1h 16m, and they belong to 9 operators, Grand Central accounting for 2. 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 143 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 24,747 trains on this date, made up of 2,565 individual units and 11,219 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 2,690 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 176 units.

The average train was 5.4 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 25,031 runs, 24,747 had a formation published (99%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

10,983 buses from 120 operators were seen on this date, across 1,942,658 position reports.

89,394 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 57,746 arrived on time, 7,000 late, and 24,648 — 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, Uni-Link ran closest to time (88%), and National Express furthest from it (29%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 31 Aug 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences