West Coast Main Line

The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is a significant railway corridor in Great Britain, which connects the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest mixed-traffic railway routes in Europe, carrying a mixture of inter-city rail, regional rail, commuter rail and rail freight traffic. The core route of the WCML runs from London to Glasgow for 399 miles (642 km) and was opened between 1837 and 1881; this totals a route mileage of 700 miles (1,127 km) by including its many branches. The Glasgow–Edinburgh via Carstairs line connects the WCML to Edinburgh Waverley; however, the main London–Edinburgh route is the East Coast Main Line (ECML) via York. Several sections of the WCML form part of the suburban railway systems in London, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, with many more smaller commuter stations, as well as providing links to more rural towns. It is one of the busiest rail freight routes in Europe, carrying 40% of all UK traffic.; it is the principal corridor linking the European mainland (via the Channel Tunnel) through London and South East England to the West Midlands, North West England and Scotland. The line has been declared a strategic European route and designated a priority Trans-European Networks (TENS) route. A number of railway writers refer to it as "The Premier line". The WCML was not originally conceived as a single route, but was built as a patchwork of local lines by several companies which were linked together. The largest of these amalgamated in 1846 to create the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), which then gradually absorbed most of the others; the exceptions were the Caledonian Railway in Scotland and the North Staffordshire Railway (NSR), which both remained independent until 1923. The core route was built mostly between the 1830s and 1850s, but several cut-off routes and branches were built in later decades. In 1923, the entire…