Wednesday, 14 October 2026

87% of the 19,829 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Wednesday, 14 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,063 recorded runs, 440 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 17,218 were within five minutes, 2,475 between five and thirty minutes down, and 136 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 682 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 97.7% of its 394 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 12.1%.

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

Buses on this date: 134,759 journeys followed to their destination, 72.4% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 19,829 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,063, and the bands are exclusive. 5,794 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 3,015 runs down to LS on 8. 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 85% — 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 225 of the 440 cancellations (51.1%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 1h 55m behind schedule — Manchester Piccadilly to Nottingham, booked away at 21:41, run by East Midlands Railway. The ten longest range from 1h 55m down to 1h 12m, and they belong to 7 operators, East Midlands Railway 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 47% of 157 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 15.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 19,316 trains on this date, made up of 2,533 individual units and 11,132 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 2,305 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 188 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 26,063 runs, 19,316 had a formation published (74%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,765 buses from 187 operators were seen on this date, across 3,189,889 position reports.

134,759 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 97,591 arrived on time, 7,846 late, and 29,322 — 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 0.3 minutes late, and 819 journeys finished more than fifteen minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (90%), 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 14 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences