Tuesday, 20 October 2026

87% of the 21,317 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Tuesday, 20 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,237 recorded runs, 457 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 18,616 were within five minutes, 2,589 between five and thirty minutes down, and 112 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 557 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 99.2% of its 591 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 8.7%.

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: 135,274 journeys followed to their destination, 70.3% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,317 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,237, and the bands are exclusive. 3,463 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 2,966 runs down to SO 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 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 235 of the 457 cancellations (51.4%), 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 18m behind schedule — Fort William to Edinburgh, booked away at 19:50, run by Caledonian Sleeper. The ten longest range from 2h 18m down to 1h 10m, and they belong to 5 operators, Transport for Wales accounting for 5. 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 55% of 156 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 17.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,144 trains on this date, made up of 2,914 individual units and 12,815 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 3,381 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 222 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 25,237 runs, 27,144 had a formation published (108%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,763 buses from 185 operators were seen on this date, across 3,208,112 position reports.

135,274 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 95,050 arrived on time, 6,844 late, and 33,380 — 25% — 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.

Averaged across every journey, buses arrived 0.2 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (88%), and National Express furthest from it (31%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 20 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences