Tuesday, 29 September 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Tuesday, 29 September 2026: 89% of the 22,747 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 28 of 26,530 were cancelled.

20,329 of the 22,747 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 2.6 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, 112 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 13:17 London Kings Cross to Bradford Interchange, which arrived 2h 07m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by engineering works not being finished on time” (2 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 22,747 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,530, and the bands are exclusive. 3,755 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

37 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 3,075 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway on 8. 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 89% — why both are published, what each hides, and how the sort treats a small operator.

Why trains were late

7 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 25 of the 28 cancellations (89.3%), 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 07m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Bradford Interchange, booked away at 13:17, run by Grand Central. The ten longest range from 2h 07m down to 1h 29m, and they belong to 8 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 51% of 174 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 17.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,368 trains on this date, made up of 2,896 individual units and 12,728 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 3,290 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 24 vehicles.

Of 26,530 runs, 27,368 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,580 buses from 185 operators were seen on this date, across 3,177,741 position reports.

134,604 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 95,490 arrived on time, 7,361 late, and 31,753 — 24% — 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.

Averaged across every journey, buses arrived 0.1 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Reading Buses ran closest to time (89%), and National Express furthest from it (36%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 29 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences