Wednesday, 11 November 2026

Wednesday, 11 November 2026 was a poor day on the railway: of the 20,406 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded, 86% were within five minutes, and a further 783 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.

2,679 trains arrived more than five minutes late and 204 more than half an hour, against 17,523 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 late running train being in front of this one” — 530 services carried it. Darwin publishes these as complete sentences written for passengers, so they appear here unedited.

The busiest hour was 07:00, with 1,662 booked departures and an average delay of 2.5 minutes.

Buses on this date: 126,880 journeys followed to their destination, 72.2% on time.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,406 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 26,253, and the bands are exclusive. 5,064 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 3,039 runs down to Caledonian Sleeper on 10. 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 86% 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 445 of the 783 cancellations (56.8%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 2h 23m behind schedule — Newcastle Airport to South Hylton (T & W Metro), booked away at 06:50, run by Tyne and Wear Metro. The ten longest range from 2h 23m down to 1h 44m, and they belong to 5 operators, Southeastern accounting for 4. 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 18% of 932 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 27,175 trains on this date, made up of 2,902 individual units and 12,776 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 3,330 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 218 units.

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

Of 26,253 runs, 27,175 had a formation published (104%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,372 buses from 188 operators were seen on this date, across 2,937,971 position reports.

126,880 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 91,583 arrived on time, 6,859 late, and 28,438 — 22% — 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 0.1 minutes late, and 744 journeys finished more than fifteen minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company ran closest to time (88%), and National Express furthest from it (35%).

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

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 11 Nov 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences