Sunday, 1 November 2026

The railway ran close to plan on Sunday, 1 November 2026: 89% of the 12,771 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and only 249 of 18,750 were cancelled.

11,398 of the 12,771 trains whose arrival was recorded were within five minutes, and the average delay was 1.1 minutes. Days like this rarely make the news, which is part of why they are worth recording.

A weekend timetable, so the 18,750 recorded runs are well below a weekday's — most engineering possessions land here too, which shortens some routes and removes others entirely.

Even so, 48 trains were more than half an hour late. The worst was the 08:21 Elephant & Castle Underground to Harrow & Wealdstone, which arrived 1h 43m behind schedule.

Where a reason was given at all, the most frequent was “This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” (478 services).

Buses on this date: 91,491 journeys followed to their destination, 63.9% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 12,771 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 18,750, and the bands are exclusive. 5,730 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 South Western Railway on 2,022 runs down to LS on 4. 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 89% and 88% — 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 113 of the 249 cancellations (45.4%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 1h 43m behind schedule — Elephant & Castle Underground to Harrow & Wealdstone, booked away at 08:21, run by London Underground. The ten longest range from 1h 43m down to 47 min, and they belong to 7 operators, Great Western Railway 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 05:00, when 36% of 103 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 20.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 15,366 trains on this date, made up of 2,114 individual units and 9,545 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 1,466 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 138 units.

The average train was 5.9 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 18,750 runs, 15,366 had a formation published (82%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

10,923 buses from 117 operators were seen on this date, across 1,964,684 position reports.

91,491 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 58,438 arrived on time, 6,797 late, and 26,256 — 29% — 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 0.1 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) ran closest to time (88%), 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 1 Nov 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences