Sunday, 20 September 2026

90% of the 12,470 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Sunday, 20 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 17,288 recorded runs, 273 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 11,172 were within five minutes, 1,179 between five and thirty minutes down, and 119 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 298 services.

Tyne and Wear Metro came closest to running to time, 100.0% of its 122 recorded arrivals; CrossCountry had the largest cancelled share at 8.5%.

A weekend timetable, so the 17,288 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 12,470 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 17,288, and the bands are exclusive. 4,545 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 1,695 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 90% and 88% — 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 145 of the 273 cancellations (53.1%), 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 45m behind schedule — Swansea to London Paddington, booked away at 11:43, run by Great Western Railway. The ten longest range from 2h 45m down to 1h 32m, and they belong to 4 operators, Great Western Railway 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 06:00, when 47% of 246 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 18.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 14,741 trains on this date, made up of 2,174 individual units and 9,616 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 1,717 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 149 units.

The average train was 5.8 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 16 vehicles.

Of 17,288 runs, 14,741 had a formation published (85%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,038 buses from 122 operators were seen on this date, across 2,008,299 position reports.

95,686 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 62,489 arrived on time, 7,599 late, and 25,598 — 27% — 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 0.1 minutes late, and 594 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) ran closest to time (85%), 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 20 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences