Saturday, 26 September 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Saturday, 26 September 2026: 89% of the 20,655 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 359 of 25,282 were cancelled.

18,340 of the 20,655 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.5 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

A weekend timetable, so the 25,282 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

Even so, 124 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 22:18 London St Pancras (Intl) to Kettering, which arrived 3h 34m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” (615 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,655 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,282, and the bands are exclusive. 4,268 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 2,965 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 89% and 87% — 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 180 of the 359 cancellations (50.1%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 34m behind schedule — London St Pancras (Intl) to Kettering, booked away at 22:18, run by East Midlands Railway. The ten longest range from 3h 34m down to 2h 30m, and they belong to 3 operators, Thameslink accounting for 6. 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 63% of 140 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 22.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 24,554 trains on this date, made up of 2,628 individual units and 11,589 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 2,639 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 189 units.

The average train was 5.5 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 25,282 runs, 24,554 had a formation published (97%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,630 buses from 152 operators were seen on this date, across 2,811,419 position reports.

129,722 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 91,806 arrived on time, 8,288 late, and 29,628 — 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 0.2 minutes late, and 746 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (90%), 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 26 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences