Classic route
Avanti West Coast
London → Glasgow · England · Scotland
Avanti West Coast in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 645 km
- Fastest time
- 4 h 30 min
- Average speed
- 143 km/h
- Top speed
- 200 km/h
- Operator
- Avanti West Coast
- Train
- Class 390 Pendolino
- Countries
- England, Scotland
- In service since
- 1974
- Runs
- hourly
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Tilting Pendolinos sway through the Lune Gorge and over Shap summit on Britain’s busiest mixed-traffic artery.
The West Coast Main Line is Britain’s heavy-haul Anglo-Scottish artery, electrified through to Glasgow in 1974 and bent enough that only tilting Pendolinos can keep time on it. The drama is saved for the north: the assault on Shap summit across the Cumbrian fells, the green squeeze of the Lune gorge, then Beattock bank over the Southern Uplands before the Clyde leads the wires into Glasgow Central. Generations of enginemen measured themselves against those two climbs; the Pendolinos barely notice.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 6346230 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 46 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 15 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via Transitous: our line passes within 83 m of every station Avanti calls at (the planner's own shape was too coarse to measure a line against)
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Trent valley racing ground
- Lune gorge beside the fells
- Shap summit
- Beattock bank
- Clyde valley descent
- Glasgow Central’s glass roof
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More train routes in United Kingdom · England · Scotland.
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