Sunday, 4 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Sunday, 4 October 2026: 91% of the 12,814 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 255 of 18,102 were cancelled.

11,625 of the 12,814 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 0.9 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

A weekend timetable, so the 18,102 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

Even so, 42 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 14:39 Paris Nord to London St Pancras (Intl), which arrived 1h 41m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” (400 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 12,814 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 18,102, and the bands are exclusive. 5,033 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 South Western Railway on 1,919 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway on 2. 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 89% — 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 135 of the 255 cancellations (52.9%), 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 41m behind schedule — Paris Nord to London St Pancras (Intl), booked away at 14:39, run by Eurostar. The ten longest range from 1h 41m down to 54 min, and they belong to 7 operators, Eurostar 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 05:00, when 29% of 101 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 03:00 with 21.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,654 trains on this date, made up of 2,274 individual units and 10,117 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 1,687 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 164 units.

The average train was 5.9 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 18 vehicles.

Of 18,102 runs, 15,654 had a formation published (86%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,044 buses from 117 operators were seen on this date, across 2,013,966 position reports.

97,121 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 63,888 arrived on time, 7,558 late, and 25,675 — 26% — 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 0.1 minutes late, and 533 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 (31%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 4 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences