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It goes without saying that a delay in your train timings can greatly impact your business for the day, whether you were going out for brunch with a client, or a friend’s birthday, or simply commuting to your office.
However, innumerable people do not know that if your UK train was delayed enough (more on what stands by the definition of ‘enough’ later), you could claim a ‘delay repay’ or compensation.
If we are talking statistics, as per a report by finder.com, 12.2% of all UK planned trains were delayed by 5 mins or more in 2019, whereas 7.3% of all overnight sleeper trains in the UK were delayed by 30 minutes or more.
So, in order to claim compensation, how do you know how delayed your UK train was? This is the post where we take you through multiple ways you can find about the delays in your past UK trains.
Possible Reasons Why Your UK Train was Delayed
Delays can be greatly pesky, and although delays are not a very common issue when it comes to UK trains, most delays that occur are results of congestion on the busiest parts of the railway network during surge times. The congestion on these networks during peak times leads to delays.
Very often, bad weather such as heavy rain, or snow, or hailstorm could be reasons behind the unavoidable delay. Other possible reasons why your UK train could be delayed could be infrastructure faults or performance checks that may take longer than usual.
Besides these, here are a few reasons that may not be very recurrent but still cause a consequential delay:
- Broken or buckled rail
- Summer heat
- Engineering works
- Fatalities
- Signals and point failures
- Speed restrictions
- Vandalism
- Trespassing
- Landslips
- Knock-on delays
Can you Check How Delayed Your UK Train was on National Rail Enquiries?
Unfortunately, you can not check how delayed your UK train was on the official website of National Rail Enquiries. The website for National Rail Enquiries journey planner only lets you search for live train statuses or trains scheduled for the day and whether or not they are running late.
You can not search into historic data of UK train delays.
The same goes for National Rail Enquiries live departures and arrivals pages that, as the name suggests, show you live train statuses, but not the status of the trains in the past.
So, if these official government websites won’t feed your historic data of UK trains, how do you check how delayed your UK train was? This brings us to the next topic…
How to Check How Delayed Your UK Train was?
Although the official website of National Rail Enquiries does not offer you to check into the historic delay data of UK trains, third-party apps and websites do. To your relief, there are a handful of third-party sites that have access to the underlying Network Rail data feeds, including the historical data.
Below we have talked about these sites that pull in the delay data of the past UK trains and how you can check how delayed your UK train was on these sites:
1. Raildar
Raildar is one of the most trusted websites, used by both commoners and rail professionals for up-to-date relevant and accurate rail information of the UK rail network. It is also available as an application both on Google Playstore and Apple Store.
Not only does Raildar provide you with historical data of a UK train’s arrival/departure and lateness, but also other services such as:
- Departure Boards that show the current location of your train
- A map of trains moving around a specific network in real-time
- Train statistics provided as easy-to-read reports
- Junction Maps include some live train movement and signals.
However, in order to use its services, you will need to sign up or sign in into an existing account on Raildar. If you do not have a Raildar account, you can set one up.
Although it has 3 subscription plans, the ‘Personal’ plan is free of cost. This subscription is enough to be able to check how delayed your UK train was.
To register on a ‘Personal’ subscription:
- Go to the homepage of Raildar and scroll to the extreme bottom of the page, where you will find the subscriptions and a ‘Register Now’ button below each subscription.
- Tap on ‘Register Now’ below the ‘Personal’ subscription plan.
- Fill in your details, or Sign Up using Facebook.
- If you fill in details manually, you will receive an activation link on your mail. Click on the link, and you will successfully have your account created.
How to use Raildar?
- Given that you are already signed up, go to the homepage, and from amongst the service placards, tap on ‘History.’
- You will be redirected to a new page. Fill in the information asked for, such as Starting Station, Destination Station, Month, Days of Week, Outbound Time, and Return Time.
- Next, click on the ‘Get delay repay report’ button. You will have the historic data of the UK trains from that day, including the delays of services if any.
2. On Train Times
On Time Trains is a reliable source if you are looking to find accurate data on delays in your historic UK train in order to claim compensation. Launched in 2017, On Train Times relies on vast and equally reliable and useful sources of open data, which include National Rail, Network Rail, NaPTAN, ORR, and Open Rail Data Community.
The larger part of this data is refreshed and updated every five to ten minutes, which translates to the accuracy of not only the live data but also the historical data.
On Time Trains aims to provide you the following services, besides letting you check how delayed your train was:
- Search for a commute to be able to consider the best and the worst services to travel on
- Blogs on rail performance analysis and news associated with rail performance
- Access historic departure and arrival times for trains
- Check passenger count rankings and performance of your station or another station
The best part about using On Time Trains is that you can easily check which services are eligible for a delay to repay, in case you traveled with one. Along with the list of these services, you are also provided with quick links to submit your compensation claims on the respective services’ claims page.
How to use On Train Times?
To check delay for your UK train on On Train Times, follow the steps below:
- Go to the homepage of the official website. You will see two separate boxes, one that says ‘Journeys & Delay Repay’ and the other that says ‘Stations’.
- Go to the ‘Journeys & Delay Repay’ box and fill in relevant information such as ‘From’ and ‘To’, Time of Departure, etc.
- Next, click on the green bar below the information section that says ‘Check for Delay Repay’.
- The site will pull in data about services that were late at the specific time that you filled out initially.
3. Recent Train Times
Recent Train Times is just as great an option to look into historic data of your UK train as Raildar. The bright side to this is that you save up on the time of signing up and can directly move to search for the data you need. It also has advanced options, which can help you further filter your results.
The information available on Recent Train Times is sourced from Open Data Feeds by Network Rail. This data is closely augmented with data from the Rail Delivery Group (Darwin).
The collection and processing of this data from official and reliable sources allow Recent Train times to provide real-time information, along with accurate historical data.
Recent Train Times provides information about which services have been running on time, and how they have been running in the recent weeks. Although the main goal Recent Train Times aims to serve with this historic data or information of train services is to help you plan your train trip accordingly.
However, you can use it to your benefit by looking at the data and checking if your train was delayed and by how much.
How to use Recent Train Times?
Follow the steps below to check how delayed your train was using Recent Train Times:
- Go to the homepage and fill in the information under ‘Search’.
- Apart from providing ‘From’ and ‘To’, choose the time and time period. If your train was late at arrival, choose ‘Arrive’ from the drop-down menu next to ‘Time’.
- In Arrival Times, choose ‘Show average & actual times’ from the drop-down menu.
- In the ‘display’ box, fill in the number of days for which you want the historic data of the UK trains. If you wish to check the data of your train from the last day, type ‘1’ in the box, and so on.
- If you wish to narrow down your search, tick the box on the left of ‘Advanced Options’ and select accordingly’.
- Next, hit ‘Search’ for ‘Get All Train Times’.
4. Real Time Trains
Realtime Trains is operated by swlines ltd. We also operate RailMiles, a journey logging system for rail enthusiasts.
Realtime Trains or Real Time Trains is an independent website, operated by swlines ltd., launched in October 2012 to provide historic data of UK trains, as well as real-time live information on the UK’s rail network. The data is derived from Network Rail’s open data system and other reliable sources.
Real Time Trains has launched 3 versions of the website so far, each one upgraded and better functioning than the other. The latest launch of the 3rd version in October 2019 went on to incorporate a ‘Know Your Train’ and ‘Track Your Train’ segment in 2020.
How to use Real Time Trains?
Real Time Trains makes it highly feasible for you to check historic data of your UK train.
- On the homepage, on your desktop, or laptop, you will see a box that says ‘Search For Trains’. Right below it is a link that says, ‘Want more control? Go to our search page.’
- Tap on the same, and then choose ‘Detailed’ from the options ‘Simple’ and ‘Detailed’ from the Search Mode.
- Now, fill in the information asked. Real Time Trains only shows historic data of the last 7 days and estimate data for the next 180 days.
- Once you have filled in the information, hit ‘Search’.
5. Open Train Times
Open Train Times is one of the easiest sites to work around. Sourcing its data from Network Rail, Open Train Times can be a ‘fairly’ reliable source to get historic data of your UK train. However, when it comes to the live-time data processing, Open Train Times may be accurate, but not as accurate as most other sites mentioned in this post.
How to use Open Train Times?
- Go to the homepage, and you will see a blue dialog box that says ‘ Search for Trains’.
- Add the ‘From’ and ‘When’. When you tap on ‘When’, a Calendar will pop up – choose the day or date for which you want the data.
- Add ‘At’ which is basically the timing.
- Hit ‘To the Trains’ option.
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