TrainAtlasTrainAtlas analysed 279,162 terminal arrivals across 2,836 route directions in seven qualifying European country cohorts for 18-24 October 2026. This is our verified source sample, not a complete census of European railways.
All ten places come from the German-feed cohort, but this is not an all-DB ranking. National Express and VIAS are represented; both Köln-Berlin directions combine DB and FlixTrain arrivals. Arnhem-Düsseldorf is a cross-border direction, so German-feed does not mean every endpoint is in Germany.
The European top ten
| # | Route / operator | Median delay | Late (5+ min) | Arrivals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| =1 | Köln HbfBerlin HbfDB / FlixTrain | 33min | 88% | 57 |
| =1 | Berlin HbfDüsseldorf HbfDB | 33min | 91% | 35 |
| 3 | Köln HbfHamburg-AltonaDB | 31min | 83% | 35 |
| 4 | WeselKoblenz HbfNational Express | 30min | 92% | 106 |
| 5 | Krefeld HbfRheineNational Express | 29min | 88% | 78 |
| =6 | BocholtDüsseldorf HbfVIAS | 27min | 97% | 109 |
| =6 | Arnhem CentraalDüsseldorf HbfVIAS | 27min | 97% | 107 |
| 8 | Köln HbfBerlin GesundbrunnenDB | 27min | 94% | 50 |
| 9 | Berlin HbfKöln HbfDB / FlixTrain | 26min | 90% | 89 |
| 10 | CuxhavenHamburg-Harburg | 25min | 79% | 29 |
The two 33-minute leaders and two exact 27-minute directions are tied, with sample size deciding their displayed order. The 29.5, 28.5 and 26.5-minute medians display as 30, 29 and 27 respectively; rounding does not change their ranking. The carousel retains its fixed sequential position badges. Operator captions appear only when supported by source evidence; a missing caption does not remove that direction from the ranking.
Seven qualifying country cohorts
| Country cohort | Terminal arrivals | Directions |
|---|---|---|
| Belgium | 17,327 | 195 |
| Finland | 5,958 | 46 |
| Germany | 173,161 | 1,734 |
| Ireland | 4,244 | 44 |
| Italy | 56,573 | 609 |
| Netherlands | 5,273 | 48 |
| Sweden | 16,626 | 160 |
Where are the other countries?
The tenth-place cutoff is 25 minutes. Other included countries have lower highest eligible route medians:
- Italy: 20 minutes - REGGIO DI CALABRIA CENTRALE → TORINO PORTA NUOVA (25 arrivals).
- Sweden: 17 minutes - Ludvika → Västerås C (48 arrivals).
- Finland: 9 minutes - Helsinki asema → Rovaniemi (30 arrivals).
- Ireland: 7.7 minutes - Sligo → Dublin Connolly (53 arrivals).
- Belgium: 4 minutes - Dendermonde → Edingen / Enghien (88 arrivals).
- Netherlands: 2.7 minutes - Amsterdam Centraal → Rotterdam Centraal (71 arrivals).
Those countries are part of the comparison; none reaches the top-ten cutoff. Germany accounts for 1,734 of the 2,836 eligible directions, so its much broader source sample also gives it more opportunities to appear. This is not a like-for-like national punctuality comparison, and being absent from the top ten does not establish that a country's railway is more punctual overall.
Not admitted this week: France has 68,444 retained end-of-day capture rows, but none currently has both scheduled and actual terminal-arrival clocks required by this report query. Poland's weakest day has 839 domestic observations against a daily median of 5,529, below its unchanged 70% consistency floor. The UK has 27 of 32 sampled directions, below the minimum of 30. Austria has 593 verified terminal arrivals, with a daily minimum of 65 and median of 80, below its unchanged seven-day gate. Spain still lacks independently verified terminal-arrival evidence; Norway fails its source completeness and manifest gate. No thresholds were reduced and no missing observations were invented.
Country-source admission is separate from a standalone delayed-route page, which has its own unchanged route-level qualification. The Italian TrainStats subset is not represented as verified coverage of every Italian operator.
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How to read this report
- A completed week.
- Sunday 18 October through Saturday 24 October 2026, using settled, source-specific reporting inputs. This dated report is not a live operational status feed.
- Median and a 25-arrival floor.
- Rank by precise median arrival delay, then sample count. Each displayed direction has at least 25 arrivals. Opposite directions stay separate. Whole-minute labels use half-up rounding.
- Operator attribution.
- Verified service labels support DB, FlixTrain, National Express and VIAS. Mixed samples list their supported operators; unsupported labels are omitted without guessing or changing samples.
- Scope.
- Country labels describe admitted source cohorts with uneven national coverage. All country, mapping, provenance and route thresholds remain unchanged.
Independent measurements from retained source data, not official operator punctuality statistics. German inputs use the piebro arrival archive; the Italian subset uses the TrainStats archive. Download the report data.