Friday, 25 September 2026

88% of the 22,318 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Friday, 25 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,623 recorded runs, 512 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 19,605 were within five minutes, 2,559 between five and thirty minutes down, and 154 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 600 services.

London Overground came closest to running to time, 97.3% of its 1,584 recorded arrivals; Transport for Wales had the largest cancelled share at 6.8%.

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 22,318 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,623, and the bands are exclusive. 3,793 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 3,069 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 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 317 of the 512 cancellations (61.9%), 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 48m behind schedule — Brighton to Southampton Central, booked away at 17:13, run by Southern. The ten longest range from 1h 48m down to 58 min, and they belong to 9 operators, South Western Railway accounting for 2. 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 121 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 27,327 trains on this date, made up of 2,906 individual units and 12,768 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 3,248 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 221 units.

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

Of 26,623 runs, 27,327 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,620 buses from 190 operators were seen on this date, across 3,205,916 position reports.

138,478 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 98,967 arrived on time, 8,236 late, and 31,275 — 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 802 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (91%), 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 25 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences