Wednesday, 23 September 2026

Wednesday, 23 September 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 19,692 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 88% were within five minutes, and a further 765 were cancelled outright.

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

2,220 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 215 more than half an hour, against 17,257 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 1.7 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” — 510 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,696 booked departures and an average delay of 2.4 minutes.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 19,692 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,664, and the bands are exclusive. 6,207 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 3,043 runs down to Caledonian Sleeper on 5. 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 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 562 of the 765 cancellations (73.5%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 4h 36m behind schedule — Reading to Abbey Wood, booked away at 17:16, run by Elizabeth line. The ten longest range from 4h 36m down to 1h 31m, and they belong to 5 operators, Avanti West Coast 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 04:00, when 56% of 151 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 13.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,205 trains on this date, made up of 2,893 individual units and 12,739 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 3,337 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 223 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 26,664 runs, 27,205 had a formation published (102%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,354 buses from 189 operators were seen on this date, across 3,171,272 position reports.

135,855 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 97,003 arrived on time, 7,602 late, and 31,250 — 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 807 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (94%), and National Express furthest from it (31%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 23 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences