Tuesday, 1 September 2026

87% of the 21,845 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Tuesday, 1 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,564 recorded runs, 578 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 19,001 were within five minutes, 2,670 between five and thirty minutes down, and 174 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 516 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 98.2% of its 617 recorded arrivals; Great Northern had the largest cancelled share at 6.3%.

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 21,845 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,564, and the bands are exclusive. 4,141 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 3,156 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway 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 87% 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 322 of the 578 cancellations (55.7%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 18m behind schedule — Great Yarmouth to Norwich, booked away at 09:14, run by Greater Anglia. The ten longest range from 3h 18m down to 1h 16m, and they belong to 4 operators, Greater Anglia 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 56% of 154 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 13.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,994 trains on this date, made up of 2,890 individual units and 12,690 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 3,178 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 221 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 16 vehicles.

Of 26,564 runs, 26,994 had a formation published (102%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

16,567 buses from 167 operators were seen on this date, across 3,097,640 position reports.

129,747 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 90,891 arrived on time, 6,515 late, and 32,341 — 25% — 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, Reading Buses ran closest to time (90%), and National Express furthest from it (28%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 1 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences