Monday, 5 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Monday, 5 October 2026: 91% of the 22,112 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 389 of 26,226 were cancelled.

20,090 of the 22,112 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.2 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, 138 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 05:42 Newcastle to Carlisle, which arrived 2h 39m 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” (458 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 22,112 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,226, and the bands are exclusive. 3,725 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 3,040 runs down to Caledonian Sleeper on 6. 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 192 of the 389 cancellations (49.4%), 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 39m behind schedule — Newcastle to Carlisle, booked away at 05:42, run by Northern. The ten longest range from 2h 39m down to 1h 59m, and they belong to 4 operators, South Western Railway 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 65% of 150 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 10.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,802 trains on this date, made up of 2,879 individual units and 12,652 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 3,281 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 223 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 22 vehicles.

Of 26,226 runs, 26,802 had a formation published (102%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,342 buses from 186 operators were seen on this date, across 3,192,523 position reports.

137,918 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 97,768 arrived on time, 6,606 late, and 33,544 — 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 0.2 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (90%), and National Express furthest from it (35%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 5 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences