Thursday, 15 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Thursday, 15 October 2026: 89% of the 20,819 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 324 of 25,918 were cancelled.

18,568 of the 20,819 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.2 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, 47 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 00:31 London Kings Cross to Cambridge, which arrived 1h 38m 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” (601 services).

Buses on this date: 138,322 journeys followed to their destination, 71.2% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,819 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,918, and the bands are exclusive. 4,775 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 2,994 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 89% and 88% — 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 162 of the 324 cancellations (50.0%), 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 38m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Cambridge, booked away at 00:31, run by Great Northern. The ten longest range from 1h 38m down to 46 min, and they belong to 6 operators, CrossCountry 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 00:00, when 59% of 116 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 16.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,730 trains on this date, made up of 2,897 individual units and 12,787 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 3,202 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 25,918 runs, 26,730 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,753 buses from 186 operators were seen on this date, across 3,235,427 position reports.

138,322 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 98,548 arrived on time, 8,226 late, and 31,548 — 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 863 journeys finished more than fifteen minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (91%), 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 15 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences