Friday, 6 November 2026

87% of the 21,680 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Friday, 6 November 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 26,104 recorded runs, 520 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 18,909 were within five minutes, 2,672 between five and thirty minutes down, and 99 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 282 services.

Heathrow Express came closest to running to time, 98.7% of its 152 recorded arrivals; Northern had the largest cancelled share at 9.8%.

Friday carries the heaviest long-distance loading of the week, and it is the day on which a late-afternoon problem has the fewest spare paths to recover into.

Buses on this date: 131,323 journeys followed to their destination, 71.0% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,680 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,104, and the bands are exclusive. 3,904 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 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 403 of the 520 cancellations (77.5%), 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 34m behind schedule — Hereford to Cardiff Central, booked away at 05:30, run by Transport for Wales. The ten longest range from 1h 34m down to 1h 01m, 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 60% of 157 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 26,989 trains on this date, made up of 2,886 individual units and 12,713 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 3,255 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 220 units.

The average train was 5.5 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 26 vehicles.

Of 26,104 runs, 26,989 had a formation published (103%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,904 buses from 187 operators were seen on this date, across 3,185,678 position reports.

131,323 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 93,269 arrived on time, 7,447 late, and 30,607 — 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 (91%), 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 6 Nov 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences