Monday, 2 November 2026

85% of the 21,949 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Monday, 2 November 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,067 recorded runs, 565 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 18,700 were within five minutes, 3,100 between five and thirty minutes down, and 149 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 1,196 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 99.0% of its 617 recorded arrivals; Chiltern Railways had the largest cancelled share at 11.0%.

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: 129,198 journeys followed to their destination, 69.5% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,949 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,067, and the bands are exclusive. 3,553 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 3,030 runs down to West Coast Railway Co 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 85% and 83% — 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 325 of the 565 cancellations (57.5%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 1h 50m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Aberdeen, booked away at 05:48, run by London North Eastern Railway. The ten longest range from 1h 50m down to 1h 01m, and they belong to 5 operators, London North Eastern Railway 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 63% of 148 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 13.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 26,784 trains on this date, made up of 2,905 individual units and 12,761 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 3,272 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 24 vehicles.

Of 26,067 runs, 26,784 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,698 buses from 183 operators were seen on this date, across 3,193,475 position reports.

129,198 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 89,807 arrived on time, 5,873 late, and 33,518 — 26% — 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 0.3 minutes ahead of schedule — the early arrivals outweighing the late ones.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Reading Buses ran closest to time (89%), 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 2 Nov 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences