Port of Tilbury — Period 1 2026-27 (29 March – 25 April) report
Port of Tilbury received 39 monitored inbound services in Period 1 2026-27 — a small monitored sample. 84% of 38 completed arrivals were within 15 minutes of schedule (90% Wilson interval 72–92%), against a national freight benchmark of 89% over 14,267 completed services. The period-on-period drop from 94% sits within the wide Wilson intervals given the small sample.
- 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
39
A small monitored sample across the three Port of Tilbury TIPLOCs (TLBYPFL, TLBYTCG, TLBYTCS); Period 1 2026-27 (29 Mar – 25 Apr 2026); NROD-derived arrivals data; baseline 80 services in Period 13 2025-26; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Within 15 minutes
84%
38 completed services arriving within 15 minutes of schedule (90% Wilson interval 72–92% given the small monitored sample of 38 services); baseline 94% [88–97%] over 70 completed services in Period 13 2025-26 — wide intervals given sample size; national freight benchmark 89% over 14,267 completed services in Period 1 2026-27; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Cancellation rate
3%
1 cancellation across 39 scheduled paths; down from 13% (10 of 80) in Period 13 2025-26 — a 10 percentage-point reduction on the period; queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-28
Busiest operator
Direct Rail Services
22 of 38 completed arrivals (58%); aggregated by operator from TRUST toc_id; Period 1 2026-27; down from 61% 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 0 inbound trains a day arrived at Port of Tilbury more than 15 minutes late, about 1 in 6 of 38 completed arrivals over the 28-day period, 7 late arrivals in total. This is a small monitored sample of 39 scheduled services; the 90% Wilson interval (72–92%) is wide and the apparent fall from 94% should not be read as a confirmed trend at this sample size. Figures aggregate every monitored journey arriving at the three Tilbury TIPLOCs inbound along the Great Eastern Main Line, drawn from Network Rail's NROD/TRUST feed. Cancellations are reported separately below.
Operators at Tilbury-inbound
Direct Rail Services ran the most tilbury-inbound services in Period 1 2026-27 (22 of 38 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 Port of Tilbury
DIRFT Daventry took 24 of 33 outbound services (73%) in Period 1 2026-27 — the dominant outbound destination from Port of Tilbury, arriving within 15 minutes on 96% of trips.
| Inland terminal | Outbound services | Share | Within 15 minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIRFT Daventry | 24 | 73% | 96% (83–99%) |
| Wakefield Europort | 6 | 18% | 100% (69–100%) |
Source: Gauge Intelligence NROD-derived journey data, Period 1 2026-27. Total outbound services count every journey originating at any Port of Tilbury 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 +2 min of timetable. The long tail the A2F binary misses: 5% of services ran +47 min or more late, and 1% arrived over +80 min late. The 15-minute A2F threshold sits at the 84th percentile — 16% of services exceeded it.
Median arrival delay is 2 minutes later than Period 13 2025-26 (median was 0 min then, 2 min now).
| Percentile | Arrival delay |
|---|---|
| 50th percentile (median) — A2F threshold sits at the 84th percentile | +2 min |
| 75th percentile — A2F threshold sits at the 84th percentile | +10 min |
| 85th percentile | +16 min |
| 90th percentile | +28 min |
| 95th percentile | +47 min |
| 99th percentile | +80 min |
38 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 +0 min, p99 +31 min. Period-on-period median shift +2 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 12.6 percentage points on Period 13 2025-26 (95% then, 83% now).
Range 0%–100% across 28 days. Weekend mean 100% vs weekday 79% (+21.2 percentage points). Mean 83%. (16 of 28 days had recorded services.)
Period 1 2026-27 daily A2F averaged 99% across 16 observations. One or more observations fell outside the expected range (12 day(s) beyond the expected range; 11 run(s) of two-of-three days off-mean; 6 run(s) of four-of-five days off-mean), indicating an unusual event rather than ordinary noise.
Mean punctuality in Period 13 2025-26 was 95%. The current period is down 12.6 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, 3% of scheduled services were cancelled (1 of 39) — within the national mean of 7%; FOC traction, crew, and terminal decisions accounted for the largest share.
Cancellations are down 11.20 percentage points on Period 13 2025-26 (14% then, 3% now). The largest shifts in the responsible-party split are reported in the table below.
| Scheduled or activated paths | 39 |
| Cancelled (post-activation + pre-activation) | 1 |
| Cancellation rate | 3% 1%–11% |
| 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 | 1 | 100% |
| Third party | 0 | 0% |
| Unattributed | 0 | 0% |
Cancellation rate in Period 13 2025-26 was 14% across 80 scheduled paths. The current period is down 11.20 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.