Saturday, 19 September 2026

87% of the 17,653 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 19 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,341 recorded runs, 594 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 15,382 were within five minutes, 2,143 between five and thirty minutes down, and 128 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 556 services.

c2c came closest to running to time, 100.0% of its 140 recorded arrivals; Transport for Wales had the largest cancelled share at 7.1%.

A weekend timetable, so the 25,341 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 17,653 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,341, and the bands are exclusive. 7,094 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 2,928 runs down to Caledonian Sleeper on 3. 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 310 of the 594 cancellations (52.2%), 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 21m behind schedule — Cardiff Central to Swansea, booked away at 11:55, run by Transport for Wales. The ten longest range from 1h 21m down to 1h 03m, and they belong to 5 operators, Avanti West Coast 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 04:00, when 12% of 166 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 25.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 23,934 trains on this date, made up of 2,573 individual units and 11,235 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 2,479 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 169 units.

The average train was 5.4 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 25,341 runs, 23,934 had a formation published (94%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,602 buses from 153 operators were seen on this date, across 2,817,567 position reports.

124,795 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 87,016 arrived on time, 7,421 late, and 30,358 — 24% — 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 725 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (89%), and National Express furthest from it (27%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 19 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences