Friday, 18 September 2026

88% of the 21,801 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Friday, 18 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,083 recorded runs, 550 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 19,189 were within five minutes, 2,465 between five and thirty minutes down, and 147 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” was the most common explanation, given for 656 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 99.0% of its 614 recorded arrivals; South Western Railway had the largest cancelled share at 7.7%.

Friday carries the heaviest long-distance loading of the week, and it is the day on which a late-afternoon problem has the fewest spare paths to recover into.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,801 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,083, and the bands are exclusive. 3,732 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 3,049 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 86% — 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 350 of the 550 cancellations (63.6%), 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 16m behind schedule — Halifax to Hull, booked away at 13:16, run by Northern. The ten longest range from 3h 16m down to 1h 13m, and they belong to 7 operators, Northern 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 00:00, when 52% of 105 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 26,288 trains on this date, made up of 2,837 individual units and 12,581 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 3,192 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 219 units.

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

Of 26,083 runs, 26,288 had a formation published (101%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,413 buses from 187 operators were seen on this date, across 3,171,439 position reports.

136,721 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 96,975 arrived on time, 8,165 late, and 31,581 — 23% — 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 944 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (92%), and National Express furthest from it (29%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 18 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences