Saturday, 17 October 2026

88% of the 18,135 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 17 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 24,694 recorded runs, 485 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 15,961 were within five minutes, 2,080 between five and thirty minutes down, and 94 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a fault with the signalling system” was the most common explanation, given for 436 services.

Elizabeth line came closest to running to time, 99.8% of its 633 recorded arrivals; South Western Railway had the largest cancelled share at 7.1%.

A weekend timetable, so the 24,694 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

Buses on this date: 126,204 journeys followed to their destination, 69.8% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 18,135 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 24,694, and the bands are exclusive. 6,074 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 Northern on 2,915 runs down to LS on 2. 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 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 308 of the 485 cancellations (63.5%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 1h 47m behind schedule — London Charing Cross to Hastings, booked away at 23:30, run by Southeastern. The ten longest range from 1h 47m down to 1h 08m, and they belong to 5 operators, London North Eastern 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 36% of 152 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 21.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 23,483 trains on this date, made up of 2,574 individual units and 11,315 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 2,505 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 188 units.

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

Of 24,694 runs, 23,483 had a formation published (95%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,953 buses from 154 operators were seen on this date, across 2,849,347 position reports.

126,204 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 88,045 arrived on time, 7,454 late, and 30,705 — 24% — 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 664 journeys finished more than fifteen 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 (28%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 17 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences