Saturday, 10 October 2026

88% of the 20,054 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 10 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,381 recorded runs, 410 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 17,715 were within five minutes, 2,189 between five and thirty minutes down, and 150 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” was the most common explanation, given for 633 services.

Heathrow Express came closest to running to time, 100.0% of its 151 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 10.8%.

A weekend timetable, so the 26,381 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,054 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,381, and the bands are exclusive. 5,917 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 2,915 runs down to Gatwick Express on 1. 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 220 of the 410 cancellations (53.7%), 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 24m behind schedule — Gloucester to Plymouth, booked away at 08:54, run by CrossCountry. The ten longest range from 2h 24m down to 1h 42m, and they belong to 3 operators, Greater Anglia accounting for 8. 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 51% of 169 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 18.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 24,191 trains on this date, made up of 2,527 individual units and 11,110 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 2,746 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 185 units.

The average train was 5.5 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 26,381 runs, 24,191 had a formation published (92%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,596 buses from 151 operators were seen on this date, across 2,845,830 position reports.

130,533 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 92,791 arrived on time, 7,272 late, and 30,470 — 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 645 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company ran closest to time (87%), and National Express furthest from it (34%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 10 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences