🏴 Country
Train routes in England
37 routes · high-speed 3 · classic 20 · night train 2 · scenic 12
37 routes cross England in the TrainRouter 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 1838. Every route links to its facts, photo and story, and to the interactive world map.
Open the world railway map →Part of the 🇬🇧 United Kingdom — all 54 UK routes on one page.
Part of the Europe train map: every route on the continent, one map.
High-speed (3)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Classic (20)
- LNER Azuma
The Flying Scotsman’s route since 1862: and where Mallard set the never-beaten steam record of 203 km/h in 1938.
- Avanti West Coast
Tilting Pendolinos sway through the Lune Gorge and over Shap summit on Britain’s busiest mixed-traffic artery.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Night train (2)
- Caledonian Sleeper
The “Deerstalker Express”: fall asleep at Euston, wake up crossing Rannoch Moor with red deer at the window.
- 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.
Scenic (12)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Bluebell Railway
The world’s first preserved standard-gauge passenger railway, running vintage steam through the Sussex Weald without a break since 1960.
- 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.
- Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway
Marketed as the world’s smallest public railway, its steam expresses still get local schoolchildren to class along Romney Marsh.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence
Cross-border lines continue into
- 🇧🇪 Train routes in Belgium 13 routes
- 🇫🇷 Train routes in France 54 routes
- 🇳🇱 Train routes in Netherlands 11 routes