Wednesday, 21 October 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Wednesday, 21 October 2026: 86% of the 20,921 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 327 of 24,927 were cancelled.

17,956 of the 20,921 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 2.7 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, 204 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 21:15 London Euston to Inverness, which arrived 2h 48m 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” (277 services).

Buses on this date: 134,310 journeys followed to their destination, 70.4% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,921 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 24,927, and the bands are exclusive. 3,679 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 ScotRail on 2,922 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 86% 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 186 of the 327 cancellations (56.9%), 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 48m behind schedule — London Euston to Inverness, booked away at 21:15, run by Caledonian Sleeper. The ten longest range from 2h 48m down to 1h 31m, and they belong to 7 operators, Transport for Wales 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 04:00, when 66% of 155 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 18.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,046 trains on this date, made up of 2,916 individual units and 12,817 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 3,339 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 221 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 22 vehicles.

Of 24,927 runs, 27,046 had a formation published (109%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,500 buses from 183 operators were seen on this date, across 3,166,021 position reports.

134,310 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 94,594 arrived on time, 6,630 late, and 33,086 — 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 (90%), and National Express furthest from it (34%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 21 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences