South & West Yorkshire
Last updated 25 May 2026
Doncaster to Sheffield via Mexborough, Rotherham, and the Barnsley branch — bulk freight serving steel, aggregates, biomass, and power station approach flows.
| NR route | East Midlands / North East |
| Route chain | Doncaster – Hatfield & Stainforth – Mexborough – Rotherham – Meadowhall – Sheffield (with Barnsley branch) |
| Key constraints | Hexthorpe Junction; Aldwarke Junction; Sheffield station approaches |
| Trailing 12-period A2F | Fewer than 12 closed periods of clean data on record — available once the pipeline reaches 12 complete periods. |
Latest period summary
South & West Yorkshire recorded 76% A2F punctuality in Period 2 2026-27 (26 April – 23 May 2026) on 1,517 freight services, down 3 percentage points from 79% in Period 1 2026-27 on a smaller denominator. The intervals do not overlap with the prior period. PRELIMINARY at T+2; FINAL re-publication at T+35 after Network Rail's batch correction.
Reports
Operators active
Methodology & sources
All figures derive from Network Rail's NROD TRUST feed, processed via the Gauge Intelligence ingest pipeline. Period definitions, A2F (Arrival to Fifteen), the Wilson 90% interval, daily anomaly rules, cross-view reconciliation, and delay attribution are documented at:
Data window — period boundaries and the data-as-of cutoff
League tables — cross-view reconciliation across the four analytical views
Anomaly detection — daily A2F SPC rules
Delay attribution — DAPR cause-code breakdown
Forecasting — prediction intervals and possession-exposure estimates
The South & West Yorkshire corridor carries steel flows around the Rotherham and Sheffield works, aggregates and biomass on the Barnsley branch, and the residual coal and power station approach flows between Doncaster and the South Yorkshire hubs. It interchanges with the East Coast Main Line at Doncaster, the Midland Main Line at Sheffield, and the Northern Ports & Transpennine corridor through Mexborough and Sheffield.
Two parallel freight routes connect Doncaster to Mexborough — via Hexthorpe Junction and via the Loversall Carr line through Hatfield & Stainforth — providing routing flexibility for bulk traffic.