Sunday, 27 September 2026

88% of the 11,987 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Sunday, 27 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 17,712 recorded runs, 285 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 10,595 were within five minutes, 1,297 between five and thirty minutes down, and 95 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 388 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 99.6% of its 265 recorded arrivals; Elizabeth line had the largest cancelled share at 6.4%.

A weekend timetable, so the 17,712 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 11,987 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 17,712, and the bands are exclusive. 5,440 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 South Western Railway on 1,864 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 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 177 of the 285 cancellations (62.1%), 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 19m behind schedule — London St Pancras (Intl) to Brussels Midi, booked away at 17:04, run by Eurostar. The ten longest range from 3h 19m down to 1h 12m, and they belong to 5 operators, Southern accounting for 5. 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 13:00, when 52% of 1,147 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 21.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,190 trains on this date, made up of 2,241 individual units and 10,033 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 1,528 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 143 units.

The average train was 5.9 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 17,712 runs, 15,190 had a formation published (86%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,096 buses from 120 operators were seen on this date, across 2,009,404 position reports.

94,821 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 62,417 arrived on time, 7,243 late, and 25,161 — 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 minutes late, and 500 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 (32%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 27 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences