Saturday, 3 October 2026

91% of the 18,004 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 3 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,326 recorded runs, 515 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 16,379 were within five minutes, 1,533 between five and thirty minutes down, and 92 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 577 services.

c2c came closest to running to time, 99.2% of its 259 recorded arrivals; Great Northern had the largest cancelled share at 11.1%.

A weekend timetable, so the 25,326 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 18,004 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,326, and the bands are exclusive. 6,807 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

39 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 2,872 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 91% 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 285 of the 515 cancellations (55.3%), 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 23m behind schedule — Newcastle Airport to South Hylton (T & W Metro), booked away at 10:14, run by Tyne and Wear Metro. The ten longest range from 2h 23m down to 1h 02m, and they belong to 7 operators, South Western Railway accounting for 4. 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 14% of 152 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 24,460 trains on this date, made up of 2,588 individual units and 11,381 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 2,603 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 184 units.

The average train was 5.5 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 19 vehicles.

Of 25,326 runs, 24,460 had a formation published (97%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,577 buses from 152 operators were seen on this date, across 2,772,384 position reports.

123,097 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 86,630 arrived on time, 7,495 late, and 28,972 — 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.

The average arrival was 0.2 minutes late, and 550 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (88%), and National Express furthest from it (33%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 3 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences