Tuesday, 8 September 2026

Tuesday, 8 September 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 21,316 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 87% were within five minutes, and a further 932 were cancelled outright.

An ordinary weekday timetable, with the two commuter peaks that give the network most of its work and least of its slack.

2,609 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 106 more than half an hour, against 18,601 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 1.6 minutes.

The reason attached most often to a late train was “This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” — 635 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,662 booked departures and an average delay of 1.9 minutes.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,316 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,698, and the bands are exclusive. 3,450 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 3,044 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 84% — 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 557 of the 932 cancellations (59.8%), 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 46m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Ely, booked away at 11:24, run by Great Northern. The ten longest range from 2h 46m down to 1h 28m, and they belong to 6 operators, Eurostar 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 04:00, when 64% of 149 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 15.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,892 trains on this date, made up of 2,901 individual units and 12,762 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 3,089 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 217 units.

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

Of 25,698 runs, 26,892 had a formation published (105%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,267 buses from 190 operators were seen on this date, across 3,142,275 position reports.

139,017 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 100,136 arrived on time, 7,714 late, and 31,167 — 22% — 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 890 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company ran closest to time (82%), 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 8 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences