Sunday, 13 September 2026

Sunday, 13 September 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 11,611 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 88% were within five minutes, and a further 707 were cancelled outright.

A weekend timetable, so the 16,836 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

1,305 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 82 more than half an hour, against 10,224 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 1.4 minutes.

The reason attached most often to a late train was “This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” — 314 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 16:00, with 1,170 booked departures and an average delay of 1.4 minutes.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 11,611 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 16,836, and the bands are exclusive. 4,518 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 1,648 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway on 2. 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 88% 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 500 of the 707 cancellations (70.7%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 2h 28m behind schedule — South Gosforth (T & W Metro) to South Hylton (T & W Metro), booked away at 06:23, run by Tyne and Wear Metro. The ten longest range from 2h 28m down to 1h 01m, and they belong to 6 operators, Great Western Railway accounting for 5. 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 05:00, when 15% of 109 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 03:00 with 24.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,065 trains on this date, made up of 2,218 individual units and 9,906 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 1,525 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 143 units.

The average train was 6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 16,836 runs, 15,065 had a formation published (89%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,065 buses from 117 operators were seen on this date, across 2,008,641 position reports.

92,874 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 60,219 arrived on time, 6,997 late, and 25,658 — 28% — 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 560 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 (86%), 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 13 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences