Thursday, 24 September 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Thursday, 24 September 2026: 90% of the 22,304 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 390 of 26,645 were cancelled.

19,977 of the 22,304 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.3 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

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

Even so, 131 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 10:40 Cheltenham Spa to Cardiff Central, which arrived 2h 13m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” (715 services).

Buses on this date: 135,569 journeys followed to their destination, 71.5% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 22,304 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,645, and the bands are exclusive. 3,951 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 3,057 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway 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 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 186 of the 390 cancellations (47.7%), 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 13m behind schedule — Cheltenham Spa to Cardiff Central, booked away at 10:40, run by Transport for Wales. The ten longest range from 2h 13m down to 1h 03m, and they belong to 6 operators, Transport for Wales 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 62% of 139 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 27,380 trains on this date, made up of 2,912 individual units and 12,824 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 3,380 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 220 units.

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

Of 26,645 runs, 27,380 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,598 buses from 187 operators were seen on this date, across 3,182,336 position reports.

135,569 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 96,962 arrived on time, 7,706 late, and 30,901 — 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 804 journeys finished more than fifteen 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 (34%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 24 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences