London Gateway — Period 1 2026-27 (29 March – 25 April) report
London Gateway received 285 monitored inbound services in Period 1 2026-27 — 82% arrived within 15 minutes of schedule across 273 completed arrivals, against a national freight benchmark of 89%. The reading is in line with Period 13 2025-26's 84%; the ranges around each reading overlap.
- Edition
- v1.0 (industry review edition)
- Last updated
- 25 April 2026
- Next update
- Period 2 2026-27 — final on 24 May 2026
Headline facts and figures
Services monitored
285
10 a day across the four London Gateway terminal TIPLOCs (THMSDBS, THMSFLI, THMSLGA, THMSLGB); Period 1 2026-27 (29 Mar – 25 Apr 2026); NROD-derived arrivals data; baseline 440 services in Period 13 2025-26; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Within 15 minutes
82%
273 completed services arriving within 15 minutes of schedule (Wilson 90% interval 78%–85%); baseline 84% [80%–86%] over 419 completed services in Period 13 2025-26 — ranges overlap; national freight benchmark 89% over 14,267 completed services in Period 1 2026-27; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Cancellation rate
4%
12 cancellations across 285 scheduled paths; down from 5% (21 of 440) in Period 13 2025-26 — a 1.2 percentage-point reduction on the period; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Busiest operator
Freightliner Intermodal
139 of 273 completed arrivals (51%); aggregated by operator from TRUST toc_id; Period 1 2026-27; down from 53% share in Period 13 2025-26; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Context
ORR publishes aggregates only; this page publishes destination-attributed port-level data. Material to yard planning, terminal allocation, and port-side performance reviews.
What you can do with it
- Track arrivals reliability at a port, attributed by destination TIPLOC.
- Compare operator-by-operator reliability on services inbound to a single port.
- Cite the methodology in port operations and corridor reviews.
Who can use it
Port operations leaders · Terminal allocators · Rail journalists
Across Period 1 2026-27, roughly 2 inbound trains a day arrived at London Gateway more than 15 minutes late, about 1 in 6 of 270 completed arrivals over the 28-day period, 48 late arrivals in total. Monitored services fell from 440 to 270, consistent with the post-Easter freight calendar across deep-sea container routes. Figures aggregate every monitored journey arriving at the four London Gateway terminal TIPLOCs inbound along the Great Eastern Main Line, drawn from Network Rail's NROD/TRUST feed. Cancellations are reported separately below.
Operators at London-Gateway-inbound
Freightliner Intermodal ran the most london-gateway-inbound services in Period 1 2026-27 (137 of 270 completed arrivals). The full per-operator reliability comparison is deferred while the v1.0 industry review edition corrections inbox remains open.
Publishing a per-operator on-time comparison for the busiest freight operators at a single destination before the launch-cohort corrections cycle closes would treat provisional attribution as settled. The table returns at v2.0 general availability. The league-table methodology documents the comparison framework; the release cadence page sets out the four exit criteria for v2.0.
Source: Gauge Intelligence NROD-derived journey data, Period 1 2026-27. Single-destination headline figures (completed arrivals, aggregate within-15-minute rate, cancellations) continue to appear in the panels above; the per-operator breakdown is the panel deferred here.
Outbound destinations — services leaving London Gateway
Trafford Park took 37 of 254 outbound services (15%) in Period 1 2026-27 — the largest outbound destination from London Gateway, arriving within 15 minutes on 84% of trips.
| Inland terminal | Outbound services | Share | Within 15 minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trafford Park | 37 | 15% | 84% (72–91%) |
| Lawley Street | 24 | 9% | 92% (78–97%) |
| Doncaster iPort | 19 | 7% | 79% (61–90%) |
| East Midlands Gateway | 19 | 7% | 100% (88–100%) |
| Birch Coppice (BIFT) | 17 | 7% | 94% (77–99%) |
| Hams Hall | 14 | 6% | 93% (73–98%) |
| Wentloog | 14 | 6% | 93% (73–98%) |
| Tinsley | 12 | 5% | 75% (51–90%) |
| Coatbridge | 11 | 4% | 91% (68–98%) |
| Ditton | 10 | 4% | 80% (54–93%) |
Source: Gauge Intelligence NROD-derived journey data, Period 1 2026-27. Total outbound services count every journey originating at any London Gateway terminal TIPLOC, including services to destinations not yet named in the inland-terminal registry; rows are restricted to registered inland-terminal destinations, so the share column shows each terminal’s slice of total outbound traffic and the row counts will not sum to the total. Destinations with a published archive page link to that page; destinations named in the registry but not yet published render as plain text. The bracketed range on each within-15-minutes figure is the 90% confidence range given the sample size; terminals with fewer than 5 services in the period show a dash. Cancellations are excluded. Lens: supply-chain (port-origin destination-attributed) — see league-table methodology.
What the 15-minute threshold hides
Half of Period 1 2026-27 services arrived within +1 min of timetable. The long tail the A2F binary misses: 5% of services ran +36 min or more late, and 1% arrived over +103 min late. The 15-minute A2F threshold sits at the 82th percentile — 19% of services exceeded it.
Median arrival delay is essentially unchanged on Period 13 2025-26 (1 min then, 1 min now).
| Percentile | Arrival delay |
|---|---|
| 50th percentile (median) — A2F threshold sits at the 82th percentile | +1 min |
| 75th percentile — A2F threshold sits at the 82th percentile | +11 min |
| 85th percentile | +18 min |
| 90th percentile | +22 min |
| 95th percentile | +36 min |
| 99th percentile | +103 min |
270 services with confirmed terminal arrival in Period 1 2026-27. A2F is binary at 15 minutes — this distribution surfaces what the headline figure does not show. National 99th percentile across all freight operators: 100 min.
Baseline (Period 13 2025-26): median +1 min, p99 +106 min. Period-on-period median shift +0 min.
ORR's Freight rail usage and performance release publishes by Network Rail region and route, not by operator. This page publishes by operator and corridor.
Daily on-time arrivals across Period 1 2026-27
Daily on-time arrivals are down 2.7 percentage points on Period 13 2025-26 (85% then, 82% now).
Range 50%–100% across 28 days. Weekend mean 78% vs weekday 83% (-5.2 percentage points). Mean 82%. (23 of 28 days had recorded services.)
Period 1 2026-27 daily A2F averaged 91% across 23 observations. One or more observations fell outside the expected range (4 day(s) beyond the expected range; 1 run(s) of two-of-three days off-mean; 2 run(s) of eight consecutive days on one side of the mean), indicating an unusual event rather than ordinary noise.
Mean punctuality in Period 13 2025-26 was 85%. The current period is down 2.7 percentage points on Period 13 2025-26.
Source: Gauge Intelligence NROD-derived journey data, Period 1 2026-27. A service is counted on time when terminal arrival falls within 15 minutes of schedule. Days with no scheduled services (typically Sundays) render as gaps — a missing bar means no measurement, not a value at zero. Red bars flag days that triggered a statistical signal — see anomaly-detection methodology.
ORR's Freight rail usage and performance release publishes by Network Rail region and route, not by operator. This page publishes by operator and corridor.
Cancellation rate
In Period 1 2026-27, 5% of scheduled services were cancelled (15 of 285) — within the national mean of 7%; FOC traction, crew, and terminal decisions accounted for the largest share.
Cancellations are down 0.20 percentage points on Period 13 2025-26 (6% then, 5% now). The largest shifts in the responsible-party split are reported in the table below.
| Scheduled or activated paths | 285 |
| Cancelled (post-activation + pre-activation) | 15 |
| Cancellation rate | 5% 4%–8% |
| National cancellation rate (all freight) | 7% |
Attribution
| Responsible party | Cancellations | Share of cancelled |
|---|---|---|
| Network Rail infrastructure and possessions | 0 | 0% |
| FOC traction, crew, and terminal decisions | 11 | 73% |
| Third party | 0 | 0% |
| Unattributed | 4 | 27% |
Cancellation rate in Period 13 2025-26 was 6% across 440 scheduled paths. The current period is down 0.20 percentage points on Period 13 2025-26.
Source: NROD/TRUST activation feed and BPLAN scheduled paths, Period 1 2026-27. Cancellation rate = (post-activation + pre-activation cancellations) ÷ scheduled or activated paths. Pre-activation cancellations are TRUST CANCEL messages on schedules that never activated; post-activation cancellations have an activation and a CANCEL event. The bracketed range beside the headline rate is the 90% confidence range on the cancellation proportion given the sample size. Cause attribution uses the responsible-party mapping of the recorded cancellation reason code; see delay-attribution methodology.
What this page does not measure
Pre-activation cancellations fall outside the dataset: TRUST requires an activation event before it records a journey, so services cancelled before activation produce no TRUST record. VSTPs are excluded from the path-utilisation denominator because no Working Timetable row exists against which to measure them. Journeys without a confirmed terminal arrival are excluded from the delay distribution. The 15-minute A2F threshold is a regulatory artefact, not a natural cut-off — the "What the 15-minute threshold hides" panel surfaces the distribution behind that line.
Commercial licence
Four derivations are released to commercial-licence subscribers rather than the public archive. Each one reconciles TRUST source-data against Network Rail's Historic Delay Attribution record independently, not republished from public statistics.
- Schedule 8 net position
- Why late — delay attribution
- Schedule 4 possession exposure
- Path utilisation — corridor breakdown
Available under commercial licence. Contact [email protected] for subscription terms.
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
Revisions
No revisions to date.
A revision restates a published figure because the upstream data changed, typically a Network Rail delay-attribution refresh. The minor tier is corrected in the next release; cells affected carry an (r) flag. The intermediate tier triggers immediate amendment with an (r) flag. The wholesale tier is flagged at the top of the page and notified directly to operators and rail journalists subscribed to revision alerts.
Corrections
No corrections to date.
A correction fixes an error in the published output: an arithmetic slip, a typo, a mis-rendered chart. Revisions are different; they restate a figure because the upstream data changed. The distinction matters because corrections never silently rewrite a published number.