Saturday, 5 September 2026

85% of the 20,159 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 5 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,055 recorded runs, 558 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 17,128 were within five minutes, 2,688 between five and thirty minutes down, and 343 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” was the most common explanation, given for 682 services.

Tyne and Wear Metro came closest to running to time, 99.3% of its 146 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 12.3%.

A weekend timetable, so the 25,055 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 20,159 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,055, and the bands are exclusive. 4,338 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 85% and 83% — 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 323 of the 558 cancellations (57.9%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 4h 31m behind schedule — Manchester Oxford Road to Liverpool Lime Street, booked away at 17:15, run by Northern. The ten longest range from 4h 31m down to 1h 55m, and they belong to 5 operators, Great Western Railway accounting for 6. 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 21:00, when 60% of 1,119 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 25.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 24,653 trains on this date, made up of 2,649 individual units and 11,567 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 2,771 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 194 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 25,055 runs, 24,653 had a formation published (98%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,464 buses from 150 operators were seen on this date, across 2,761,881 position reports.

127,472 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 89,627 arrived on time, 7,398 late, and 30,447 — 24% — 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 619 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (89%), and National Express furthest from it (33%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 5 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences