Sunday, 18 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Sunday, 18 October 2026: 91% of the 13,145 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 215 of 17,844 were cancelled.

11,925 of the 13,145 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 0.8 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

A weekend timetable, so the 17,844 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

Even so, 59 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 14:27 Plymouth to Gloucester, which arrived 3h 11m 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” (330 services).

Buses on this date: 95,193 journeys followed to their destination, 65.2% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 13,145 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 17,844, and the bands are exclusive. 4,484 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

36 operators ran passenger services on this date, from South Western Railway on 1,748 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway 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 91% and 89% — 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 128 of the 215 cancellations (59.5%), 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 11m behind schedule — Plymouth to Gloucester, booked away at 14:27, run by CrossCountry. The ten longest range from 3h 11m down to 1h 07m, and they belong to 5 operators, CrossCountry accounting for 3. 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 06:00, when 53% of 257 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 03:00 with 25.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,189 trains on this date, made up of 2,176 individual units and 9,673 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 1,653 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 154 units.

The average train was 5.8 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 18 vehicles.

Of 17,844 runs, 15,189 had a formation published (85%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

11,229 buses from 121 operators were seen on this date, across 2,032,329 position reports.

95,193 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 62,033 arrived on time, 6,782 late, and 26,378 — 28% — 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 502 journeys finished more than fifteen minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) 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 18 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences