Tuesday, 10 November 2026

Tuesday, 10 November 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 21,623 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 85% were within five minutes, and a further 673 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.

3,073 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 248 more than half an hour, against 18,302 that ran to time. The average delay across every train whose arrival was recorded was 2.4 minutes.

The reason attached most often to a late train was “This service has been delayed by a late running train being in front of this one” — 923 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,654 booked departures and an average delay of 1.8 minutes.

Buses on this date: 136,907 journeys followed to their destination, 71.0% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 21,623 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,933, and the bands are exclusive. 3,637 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

36 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 3,016 runs down to Caledonian Sleeper on 6. 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 82% — 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 409 of the 673 cancellations (60.8%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 4h 17m behind schedule — London Kings Cross to Newcastle, booked away at 12:33, run by London North Eastern Railway. The ten longest range from 4h 17m down to 2h 29m, and they belong to 5 operators, London North Eastern Railway 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 04:00, when 58% of 158 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 14.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,164 trains on this date, made up of 2,901 individual units and 12,774 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 3,353 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 225 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 20 vehicles.

Of 25,933 runs, 27,164 had a formation published (105%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,390 buses from 187 operators were seen on this date, across 3,213,929 position reports.

136,907 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 97,242 arrived on time, 7,443 late, and 32,222 — 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 minutes late, and 807 journeys finished more than fifteen minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Uni-Link ran closest to time (90%), and National Express furthest from it (37%).

Our figures, not the regulator's — why buses run early, the current league.

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 10 Nov 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences