Friday, 9 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Friday, 9 October 2026: 87% of the 21,887 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 335 of 25,516 were cancelled.

19,045 of the 21,887 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 2.2 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

Friday carries the heaviest long-distance loading of the week, and it is the day on which a late-afternoon problem has the fewest spare paths to recover into.

Even so, 186 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 18:50 London Waterloo to Salisbury, which arrived 3h 18m 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” (495 services).

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,887 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,516, and the bands are exclusive. 3,294 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 2,992 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 87% and 86% — 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 186 of the 335 cancellations (55.5%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 18m behind schedule — London Waterloo to Salisbury, booked away at 18:50, run by South Western Railway. The ten longest range from 3h 18m down to 2h 29m, and all ten were South Western Railway. 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 62% of 154 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 14.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,244 trains on this date, made up of 2,907 individual units and 12,809 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 3,218 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 218 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 25,516 runs, 27,244 had a formation published (107%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,475 buses from 188 operators were seen on this date, across 3,219,661 position reports.

141,798 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 101,387 arrived on time, 8,503 late, and 31,908 — 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 845 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 (32%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 9 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences