🇬🇧 Country
Train routes in United Kingdom
81 routes · high-speed 6 · classic 43 · night train 2 · scenic 15 · heritage 12 · mountain 2 · luxury 1
81 routes cross United Kingdom in the World Train Map atlas. The longest is the CrossCountry at 1,118 km; the fastest is the Eurostar, running up to 300 km/h; the oldest line dates to 1835. Every route links to its facts, photo and story, and to the interactive world map.
Open the world railway map →Or browse by home nation: 🏴 England · 🏴 Scotland · 🏴 Wales · 🇬🇧 Northern Ireland
Part of the Europe train map: every route on the continent, one map.
High-speed (6)
- Eurostar
Drops 75 m below the sea through the 50.5 km Channel Tunnel, 37.9 km of it under the seabed, the longest undersea stretch of any rail tunnel.
Wikipedia ↗ - Eurostar
The original Channel Tunnel service to the EU capital takes St Pancras to Bruxelles-Midi in under two hours, city centre to city centre.
Wikipedia ↗ - Eurostar
A single train from St Pancras to Amsterdam Centraal since 2018: under the Channel, across Flanders and over the Dutch polders in about four hours.
Wikipedia ↗ - Southeastern Highspeed
Britain’s only domestic high-speed service: 225 km/h down HS1 to Ashford, then the 1844 South Eastern main line past Folkestone and under the white cliffs into Dover.
Wikipedia ↗ - Southeastern Highspeed
The Javelin put Margate 86 minutes from London — HS1 at 225 km/h as far as Ashford, then the 1846 Canterbury line across east Kent to the Thanet coast.
Wikipedia ↗ - Javelin North Kent
The other Javelin to Margate: off HS1 at Ebbsfleet onto the 1846 North Kent line — Rochester’s castle and cathedral, Faversham’s breweries, then the seaside string of Whitstable, Herne Bay and Margate.
Wikipedia ↗
Classic (43)
- LNER Azuma
The Flying Scotsman’s route since 1862: and where Mallard set the never-beaten steam record of 203 km/h in 1938.
Wikipedia ↗ - Avanti West Coast
Tilting Pendolinos sway through the Lune Gorge and over Shap summit on Britain’s busiest mixed-traffic artery.
Wikipedia ↗ - Enterprise
Jointly run from both capitals since 1947, it rolls over the 1855 Boyne Viaduct at Drogheda and crosses the invisible Irish border without a pause.
Wikipedia ↗ - Aberdeen–Inverness Line
Scotland the other way round, coast to coast across the whin and barley of Aberdeenshire and Moray by way of Huntly, Keith, Elgin and Nairn, on a single track finished in 1858 and still mostly single today.
Wikipedia ↗ - Midland Main Line
St Pancras’s own main line: Leicester, Derby and Chesterfield’s crooked spire, into Sheffield under the Bramall Lane floodlights.
Wikipedia ↗ - Hull Trains
An open-access original: Hull’s own train to London since 2000, off the East Coast racetrack at Doncaster and over the Ouse into Paragon station.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cardiff–Portsmouth
Wales to the Solent the slow, lovely way: the Severn Tunnel, Bath’s crescents, Salisbury’s spire and the harbour at Portsmouth.
- Liverpool–Norwich
England corner to corner: five hours and a bit through Sheffield, Nottingham and the Fens — the longest all-stops cross-country ride in the country.
- Cornish Riviera Express
The daytime flyer to Britain’s far south-west since 1904, racing 300 miles past Dartmoor and along the wave-battered Dawlish sea wall to Penzance.
Wikipedia ↗ - South Wales Main Line
GWR’s flagship South Wales express; Hitachi bi-modes drop off the 25 kV wires west of Cardiff and switch to diesel for the last dash to Swansea.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Western Main Line
Brunel’s original 1841 main line: billiard-table levels from Paddington to Didcot, then a 1 in 100 fall through the 3 km Box Tunnel, said to face the sunrise on his birthday.
Wikipedia ↗ - Avanti West Coast
Italian-built tilting Pendolinos lean into the curves of the West Coast Main Line, holding 125 mph where an upright train would have to brake.
Wikipedia ↗ - Avanti West Coast
Fast tilting Pendolinos finish at Liverpool Lime Street, opened 1836 and one of the world’s oldest grand terminus stations still in daily use.
Wikipedia ↗ - Avanti West Coast
Traces the pioneering 1838 London and Birmingham Railway, the first great trunk line driven into the capital, from Euston to England’s second city.
Wikipedia ↗ - LNER
Japanese-designed Azuma bi-modes sprint the East Coast Main Line out of King’s Cross (1852) to reach Leeds in a little over two hours.
Wikipedia ↗ - LNER
Azuma expresses hold 125 mph down the East Coast Main Line, coming over the Tyne into Newcastle on Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge.
Wikipedia ↗ - CrossCountry
Britain’s longest direct train: one Voyager grinding 695 miles and nearly 40 stops from Aberdeen on the North Sea to Plymouth on the Channel.
Wikipedia ↗ - North Wales Coast Line
The old Irish Mail route to the Dublin ferries, crossing Robert Stephenson’s Britannia Bridge to Anglesey and skirting the walls of Conwy Castle.
Wikipedia ↗ - Dartmoor Line
The first line reopened under Britain’s Restoring Your Railway plan, bringing regular trains back to Okehampton on the edge of Dartmoor half a century after closure.
Wikipedia ↗ - TransPennine Express
Coast to coast across northern England: Liverpool to Manchester, over the Pennines by way of Huddersfield and Leeds, then up the East Coast Main Line to the Tyne.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tarka Line
Along the Taw through Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter country — Devon’s surviving branch line winding from Exeter’s cathedral city to Barnstaple.
Wikipedia ↗ - Midland Main Line
St Pancras’s own intercity: the Midland Main Line under Barlow’s great arch, up through Bedford and Leicester to Nottingham — Britain’s last classic trunk to join the atlas.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Eastern Main Line
“Norwich in 90”: East Anglia’s main line across Constable country with its all-new Swiss-built FLIRT fleet — a whole English region in one green run.
Wikipedia ↗ - Welsh Marches Line
The great spine outside England’s trunk lines: Cardiff to Manchester up the castle-studded Welsh border through Abergavenny, Ludlow and Shrewsbury.
Wikipedia ↗ - Brighton Main Line
Victorian London’s dash to the sea, once home of the all-Pullman Brighton Belle — still under the hour from Victoria to the pier and the Lanes.
Wikipedia ↗ - Edinburgh–Glasgow Express
Scotland’s busiest corridor since 1842: four electric expresses an hour between its two great cities over the Falkirk high route.
Wikipedia ↗ - South Western Main Line
Waterloo’s main line to the sea: Winchester’s cathedral close, Southampton’s ocean-liner docks, Bournemouth sands and the Jurassic Coast at Weymouth.
Wikipedia ↗ - Borders Railway
The Waverley Route reborn: Britain’s longest railway reopening in a century (2015), winding out of Edinburgh to Walter Scott’s Abbotsford.
Wikipedia ↗ - Leeds–Morecambe
The 1850 “Little North Western” the slow way out of Airedale: Bentham’s fell country, the Lune valley at Wennington, and the sands of Morecambe Bay to finish.
Wikipedia ↗ - Shrewsbury–Chester
The 1848 border line between two walled towns: over Telford’s country at Chirk and the great Cefn viaduct, down the Dee valley through Wrexham to Chester.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Wales Line
The 1856 line west: Llanelli’s sands, the Tywi at Carmarthen, then deep Pembrokeshire to the haven Nelson called the finest port in Christendom.
Wikipedia ↗ - Pembroke Dock Branch
Branch line to the sea at every turn: Tenby’s walls and beaches, Saundersfoot, and the Cleddau at Pembroke Dock.
Wikipedia ↗ - Fishguard Harbour Line
The boat train’s line since 1906: over the Preseli foothills to Fishguard Harbour, where the ferry sails for the Rosslare this atlas draws from the Irish side.
- Rhymney Line
The Rhymney Railway’s own valley, opened to passengers in March 1858: out of Cardiff through the Caerphilly tunnel under the mountain, then Ystrad Mynach and Bargoed to the head of the valley at Rhymney.
Wikipedia ↗ - Ebbw Vale Line
A coal line carrying people again: passenger trains ended in 1962, came back to Ebbw Vale Parkway in February 2008 and reached Ebbw Vale Town in May 2015, climbing the Ebbw valley off the Newport main line.
Wikipedia ↗ - Maesteg Line
West along the South Wales main line to Bridgend, then up the Llynfi valley on Llynvi and Ogmore metals through Tondu to Maesteg — reopened to passengers in 1992, twenty-two years after the last train.
Wikipedia ↗ - Vale of Glamorgan Line
The coast road to Bridgend: through Barry and out along the Glamorgan shore past Rhoose, where the airport is, and Llantwit Major. Passenger trains stopped in June 1964 and returned in June 2005 with two new stations.
Wikipedia ↗ - Borderlands Line
Wrexham to the Wirral: 1860s Wrexham, Mold and Connah’s Quay metals joined to the 1896 North Wales and Liverpool line, crossing the Dee on the Hawarden swing bridge and running on to Bidston for Liverpool.
Wikipedia ↗ - Eurotunnel Le Shuttle
Drive on at Folkestone, drive off at Calais: thirty five minutes under the Channel on the shuttle that carries the cars, and the only fixed link between Britain and the continent.
- Chiltern Main Line
The other main line from London to Birmingham: finished in 1910, when the Bicester cut-off shortened it by thirty kilometres and let the Great Western match its rival on two hours.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Coastway line
Five companies built this coast road in rails between 1840 and 1889; the last of it runs out over the water on piles into Portsmouth Harbour, opened on 2 October 1876.
Wikipedia ↗ - c2c Shoeburyness–London
The Tilbury company reached Shoeburyness in 1884 and finished its direct line through Upminster to a re-sited Pitsea in 1886, the way the stopping trains from the sea to Fenchurch Street run today.
Wikipedia ↗ - Chiltern Marylebone–Aylesbury Vale Parkway
Marylebone opened on 15 March 1899, the last main line terminus London built for a century; the train runs out over the old Metropolitan and Great Central road to a station opened on 14 December 2008.
Wikipedia ↗
Night train (2)
- Caledonian Sleeper
The “Deerstalker Express”: fall asleep at Euston, wake up crossing Rannoch Moor with red deer at the window.
Wikipedia ↗ - Night Riviera
Sleeping cars have run west from Paddington since 1877; today’s train hugs Brunel’s storm-lashed Dawlish sea wall to the far tip of Cornwall.
Wikipedia ↗
Scenic (15)
- West Highland Line
Regularly voted the world’s most scenic railway: around Rannoch Moor and over the 21-arch Glenfinnan Viaduct of film fame.
Wikipedia ↗ - Settle–Carlisle Line
England’s highest main line crests Ais Gill at 356 m after striding across the 24-arch Ribblehead Viaduct, built by navvies camped on Batty Moss.
Wikipedia ↗ - Esk Valley Line
An hour and a half from Teesside across the North York Moors and down the river to the sea, on rails that reached Whitby in 1835 and were worked by horses for the first ten years.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cambrian Line
Birmingham to the Irish Sea over the Cambrian Mountains: Welshpool, the Talerddig summit cutting, Machynlleth and the estuary into Aberystwyth.
Wikipedia ↗ - Kyle of Lochalsh Line
One of the world’s great scenic railways, blasted through Torridonian rock for 82 miles from Inverness to the Skye ferry pier at Kyle of Lochalsh.
Wikipedia ↗ - Far North Line
Britain’s most northerly line, a lonely 4-hour run to Wick that swings far inland on the Lairg Loop to dodge the deep Highland sea firths.
Wikipedia ↗ - Heart of Wales Line
A 121-mile request-stop ramble through empty Mid Wales, crossing the castle-like 13-arch Knucklas Viaduct where trains halt only if you flag them down.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cambrian Coast Line
Clings to the Mid-Wales shore on mostly single track, rumbling across the half-mile timber Barmouth Viaduct over the Mawddach estuary.
Wikipedia ↗ - Belfast–Derry Line
Michael Palin called the Coleraine–Derry run one of the world’s most beautiful; the train skims the Atlantic strand below cliff-top Mussenden Temple.
Wikipedia ↗ - Highland Main Line
Over Druimuachdar Pass at 452 m — the highest main line in Britain — threading the Cairngorms from the capital to the Highland capital.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Highland Line — Oban
The West Highland Line’s other arm: splitting at Crianlarich for Loch Awe, Kilchurn Castle’s ruin and the Hebrides ferry port of Oban.
Wikipedia ↗ - Hope Valley Line
Straight through the Peak District: Edale, Kinder Scout and the Hope valley between England’s steel and cotton cities — the hikers’ line.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cumbrian Coast Line
England’s forgotten coastal railway: the Irish Sea one side, the Lakeland fells the other, all the way round from Hadrian’s city to shipbuilding Barrow.
Wikipedia ↗ - Conwy Valley Line
From the pier at Llandudno up the Conwy gorge into Snowdonia’s slate mountains, meeting the Ffestiniog steam trains at Blaenau — coast to crag in an hour.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tyne Valley Line
One of the world’s first cross-country railways (1838), shadowing Hadrian’s Wall from the Tyne to the Solway — the Roman frontier out the window.
Wikipedia ↗
Heritage (12)
- Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland
The world’s oldest narrow-gauge railway company (1836): double-ended Fairlie steam from Caernarfon castle through Snowdonia to the slate town of Blaenau.
Wikipedia ↗ - The Jacobite
Steam over the 21 arches of Glenfinnan on the 1901 Mallaig extension: the working train that became the Hogwarts Express, white sands of Morar below.
Wikipedia (DE) ↗ - North Yorkshire Moors Railway
One of the world’s busiest steam heritage lines, climbing Stephenson’s 1836 route over the moors to Goathland, Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter films.
Wikipedia ↗ - Severn Valley Railway
Sixteen miles of preserved Great Western branch line tracing the River Severn, crossing the water on the graceful iron span of Victoria Bridge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bluebell Railway
The world’s first preserved standard-gauge passenger railway, running vintage steam through the Sussex Weald without a break since 1960.
Wikipedia ↗ - West Somerset Railway
Britain’s longest standard-gauge independent heritage railway: 22¾ miles of steam from the Quantock Hills down to the Bristol Channel shore at Minehead.
Wikipedia ↗ - Vale of Rheidol Railway
Narrow-gauge steam grinding 200 m uphill from the sea at Aberystwyth to the wooded gorge of Devil’s Bridge: the last steam line British Rail ever ran.
Wikipedia ↗ - Talyllyn Railway
The world’s first railway saved by volunteers, in 1951: its Victorian steam engines still cross Dolgoch Viaduct into the Fathew valley.
Wikipedia ↗ - Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway
Marketed as the world’s smallest public railway, its steam expresses still get local schoolchildren to class along Romney Marsh.
Wikipedia ↗ - Great Central Railway
Britain’s only double-track heritage main line, where two steam expresses can pass at speed just as they did on the last main line built towards the Continent.
Wikipedia ↗ - Keighley & Worth Valley Railway
The branch that starred in the 1970 film “The Railway Children”, steaming up the Brontë moors past Haworth to the mill village of Oxenhope.
Wikipedia ↗ - Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway
Fifteen-inch gauge up Eskdale from the Cumbrian coast, laid for iron ore in 1875 and run since as a miniature main line that Cumbria calls La’al Ratty.
Wikipedia ↗
Mountain (2)
- Snowdon Mountain Railway
Britain’s only public rack-and-pinion railway, Swiss-engineered in 1896: 950 vertical metres from Llanberis to the roof of Wales.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway
The world’s highest and steepest fully water-powered railway (1890): gravity and 700-gallon tanks alone work its twin cars on a 58% grade.
Wikipedia ↗
Luxury (1)
- Belmond Royal Scotsman
Just 40 guests aboard mahogany-panelled Pullmans that cross the Forth Bridge outbound and stable each night in Highland sidings.
Wikipedia ↗
Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence
What is the fastest train in United Kingdom?
The Eurostar, running London to Paris at up to 300 km/h. It is one of 81 routes in United Kingdom in this atlas.
Are there night trains in United Kingdom?
Yes — 2 sleeper services in this atlas serve United Kingdom: Caledonian Sleeper (London – Fort William), Night Riviera (London – Penzance).
Can you cross the border by train from United Kingdom?
Yes — 5 of its 81 routes continue into another country: Eurostar (London – Paris), Enterprise (Dublin – Belfast), Eurostar (London – Brussels), Eurostar (London – Amsterdam), among others.
Which is the most scenic railway in United Kingdom?
United Kingdom has 17 scenic or mountain lines in this atlas. The longest is the Highland Main Line, 300 km.
Cross-border lines continue into
- 🇧🇪 Train routes in Belgium 26 routes
- 🇫🇷 Train routes in France 109 routes
- 🇮🇪 Train routes in Ireland 15 routes
- 🇳🇱 Train routes in Netherlands 17 routes