Wednesday, 2 September 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Wednesday, 2 September 2026: 89% of the 19,984 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 381 of 25,766 were cancelled.

17,792 of the 19,984 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.2 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, 69 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 22:49 Sutton (London) to Bedford, which arrived 9h 14m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” (658 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 19,984 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,766, and the bands are exclusive. 5,401 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 3,083 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 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 208 of the 381 cancellations (54.6%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 9h 14m behind schedule — Sutton (London) to Bedford, booked away at 22:49, run by Thameslink. The ten longest range from 9h 14m down to 58 min, and they belong to 6 operators, Thameslink 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 146 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 17.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,093 trains on this date, made up of 2,896 individual units and 12,700 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 3,163 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 223 units.

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

Of 25,766 runs, 27,093 had a formation published (105%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

16,837 buses from 176 operators were seen on this date, across 3,122,789 position reports.

128,444 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 90,282 arrived on time, 5,984 late, and 32,178 — 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 0.3 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 (87%), 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 2 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences