Sunday, 6 September 2026

87% of the 11,980 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Sunday, 6 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 17,564 recorded runs, 358 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 10,462 were within five minutes, 1,450 between five and thirty minutes down, and 68 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 416 services.

c2c came closest to running to time, 98.7% of its 153 recorded arrivals; CrossCountry had the largest cancelled share at 23.0%.

A weekend timetable, so the 17,564 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 11,980 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 17,564, and the bands are exclusive. 5,226 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 1,723 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 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 228 of the 358 cancellations (63.7%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 1h 25m behind schedule — Plymouth to London Paddington, booked away at 17:45, run by Great Western Railway. The ten longest range from 1h 25m down to 55 min, and they belong to 7 operators, Great Western Railway 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 06:00, when 44% of 258 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 21.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,764 trains on this date, made up of 2,301 individual units and 10,222 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 1,713 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 151 units.

The average train was 5.9 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 22 vehicles.

Of 17,564 runs, 15,764 had a formation published (90%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,087 buses from 117 operators were seen on this date, across 1,943,310 position reports.

92,957 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 61,604 arrived on time, 6,820 late, and 24,533 — 26% — 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 0.1 minutes late, and 532 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (85%), and National Express furthest from it (31%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 6 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences