Saturday, 31 October 2026

87% of the 20,011 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Saturday, 31 October 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,470 recorded runs, 639 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 17,386 were within five minutes, 2,452 between five and thirty minutes down, and 173 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” was the most common explanation, given for 623 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 97.7% of its 612 recorded arrivals; c2c had the largest cancelled share at 8.2%.

A weekend timetable, so the 26,470 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: 121,267 journeys followed to their destination, 70.2% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,011 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,470, and the bands are exclusive. 5,820 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 2,962 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 87% and 84% — 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 422 of the 639 cancellations (66.0%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 15m behind schedule — Birmingham New Street to London Euston, booked away at 15:47, run by Avanti West Coast. The ten longest range from 3h 15m down to 2h 29m, and they belong to 3 operators, Avanti West Coast accounting for 7. 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 48% of 162 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 20.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 24,058 trains on this date, made up of 2,557 individual units and 11,214 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 2,347 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 178 units.

The average train was 5.5 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 26,470 runs, 24,058 had a formation published (91%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

15,654 buses from 154 operators were seen on this date, across 2,807,767 position reports.

121,267 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 85,181 arrived on time, 7,494 late, and 28,592 — 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 0.1 minutes late, and 784 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 (85%), 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 31 Oct 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences