Thursday, 5 November 2026

Thursday, 5 November 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 21,832 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 87% were within five minutes, and a further 671 were cancelled outright.

An ordinary weekday timetable, with the two commuter peaks that give the network most of its work and least of its slack.

2,741 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 135 more than half an hour, against 18,956 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 2.1 minutes.

The reason attached most often to a late train was “This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” — 581 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,670 booked departures and an average delay of 2.4 minutes.

Buses on this date: 131,020 journeys followed to their destination, 71.4% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,832 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,236, and the bands are exclusive. 3,733 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 3,028 runs down to TY 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 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 480 of the 671 cancellations (71.5%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 2h 36m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Aberdeen, booked away at 05:48, run by London North Eastern Railway. The ten longest range from 2h 36m down to 2h 10m, and they belong to 2 operators, Chiltern Railways accounting for 6. 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 00:00, when 63% of 136 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 11.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,014 trains on this date, made up of 2,935 individual units and 12,893 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 3,354 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 18 vehicles.

Of 26,236 runs, 27,014 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,882 buses from 182 operators were seen on this date, across 3,226,990 position reports.

131,020 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 93,552 arrived on time, 6,908 late, and 30,560 — 23% — 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, Uni-Link 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 5 Nov 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences