Tuesday, 6 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Tuesday, 6 October 2026: 91% of the 22,467 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 345 of 25,940 were cancelled.

20,362 of the 22,467 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.1 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, 94 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 09:50 Exeter St Davids to Cardiff Central, which arrived 2h 10m 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” (574 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 22,467 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,940, and the bands are exclusive. 3,128 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 3,043 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 168 of the 345 cancellations (48.7%), 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 10m behind schedule — Exeter St Davids to Cardiff Central, booked away at 09:50, run by Great Western Railway. The ten longest range from 2h 10m down to 1h 25m, and they belong to 4 operators, Elizabeth line 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 61% 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 13.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,344 trains on this date, made up of 2,931 individual units and 12,856 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 3,314 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 18 vehicles.

Of 25,940 runs, 27,344 had a formation published (105%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,338 buses from 186 operators were seen on this date, across 3,203,782 position reports.

138,940 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 98,974 arrived on time, 7,785 late, and 32,181 — 23% — 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 828 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Reading Buses 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 6 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences