Thursday, 8 October 2026

88% of the 22,082 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Thursday, 8 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,813 recorded runs, 427 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 19,474 were within five minutes, 2,494 between five and thirty minutes down, and 114 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 677 services.

London Overground came closest to running to time, 97.0% of its 1,558 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 9.8%.

An ordinary weekday timetable, with the two commuter peaks that give the network most of its work and least of its slack.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 22,082 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,813, and the bands are exclusive. 3,304 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

38 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 3,024 runs down to TY on 4. 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 88% and 87% — 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 236 of the 427 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 51m behind schedule — London Victoria to Littlehampton, booked away at 13:16, run by Southern. The ten longest range from 2h 51m down to 1h 23m, and they belong to 6 operators, Southern 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 04:00, when 60% of 151 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 12.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,330 trains on this date, made up of 2,926 individual units and 12,855 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 3,322 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 22 vehicles.

Of 25,813 runs, 27,330 had a formation published (106%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,470 buses from 186 operators were seen on this date, across 3,215,133 position reports.

140,381 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 101,410 arrived on time, 8,156 late, and 30,815 — 22% — 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 888 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (89%), and National Express furthest from it (37%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 8 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences