Thursday, 17 September 2026

88% of the 15,256 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Thursday, 17 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,906 recorded runs, 464 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 13,402 were within five minutes, 1,778 between five and thirty minutes down, and 76 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 474 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 98.5% of its 343 recorded arrivals; c2c had the largest cancelled share at 16.4%.

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

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 15,256 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,906, and the bands are exclusive. 10,186 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 3,037 runs down to TY 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 88% 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 285 of the 464 cancellations (61.4%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 08m behind schedule — Wrexham Central to Bidston, booked away at 09:16, run by Transport for Wales. The ten longest range from 3h 08m down to 1h 14m, and they belong to 6 operators, South Western Railway accounting for 3. 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 20:00, when 7% of 1,208 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 16.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,098 trains on this date, made up of 2,913 individual units and 12,835 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 3,316 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 222 units.

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

Of 25,906 runs, 27,098 had a formation published (105%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,338 buses from 188 operators were seen on this date, across 3,112,352 position reports.

131,943 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 94,947 arrived on time, 7,469 late, and 29,527 — 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 835 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (93%), and National Express furthest from it (34%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 17 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences