Railways in the United Kingdom

Railways in the United Kingdom

Mapping the railways of the United Kingdom.
Status	started

United Kingdom Railways is a project to map all the mainline railways in the United Kingdom. There are related projects to map the London Underground, United Kingdom trams, and independent and minor Railways.

Progress

Most railway lines are in.

Things still work checking and needing doing.

• Adding details of the number of trackes (tracks=1, track=2) etc or adding multiple parallel tracks
• Stations layout (platforms, passages, steps etc)
• Relations for Services
• Relations for historic lines
• Relations for Network Rail operating section

Mapping services

Railway electrification in England and Wales

Railways are shown on most OpenStreetMap mapping layers alongside other information.

Stations

Main article: United Kingdom railway stations

All currently operating UK mainline railway stations have been now mapped as nodes, according to a comparison of the list from Wikipedia. There is currently an effort to map the stations in more details, including the platforms and station buildings.

Train services

Please see Talk:United Kingdom railways for discussion over colour usage

Current operational train services (as distinct from historic services) should all be mapped as relations tagged as type=route and route=train. They should also be tagged as network=National Rail to specify the service is part of the National Rail network. This helps distinguish the more important services and aids sensible display by the OpenStreetBrowser renderer.

List of services

National Rail

Thameslink

After the completion of Thameslink Programme, there are now 12 half-hourly routes in the whole Thameslink network giving a total of 24 tph through the core if the full network is implemented. A full network map can be found here and the full route descriptipon can be read here.

All routes are half-hourly unless otherwise specified.

ref=*	From	To	type=route_master	Note
Regional services (with first class, service=regional)
TL1	Bedford	Brighton	6421836 6421836
TL2	Bedford	Three Bridges (via Redhill)	16151940 16151940	Evening service now starts from Luton; 1 tph extended to Horsham on Sunday
TL3	Bedford	East Grinstead	16151939 16151939	Peak hour only service
TL4	Bedford	Littlehampton	N/A	High peak hour only service, now withdrawn (become Southern London Bridge - Littlehampton service)
TL5	Peterborough	Horsham (via Redhill)		All-day service; Sunday service 1 tph terminates at Kings Cross
TL6	Cambridge (fast from Stevenage)	Brighton		All-day service, 1 tph in evenings and on Sundays
TL7	Cambridge (local)	Maidstone East (off-peak) / Ashford International (peak)	N/A	The Kent section has never been realised; now terminates at Kings Cross and become a Great Northern service
Suburban services (without first class, service=commuter)
TL8	Welwyn Garden City (peak) / London Blackfriars (off-peak)	Sevenoaks	6464333 6464333
TL9	Luton (peak) / Kentish Town (off-peak)	Orpington	9898994 9898994	Planned as all-day service in the 2019 network but now operating peak only (from Luton in the morning, from Kentish Town in the evening)
TL10	Luton	Rainham	15045727 15045727	Evening service and Sunday service start from Kentish Town
TL11	St Albans	Sutton (via Mitcham Junction)	168327 168327	Starts from Blackfriars on Sunday morning
TL12	St Albans	Sutton (via Wimbledon)		Starts from Luton on Sunday

Great Northern

ref=*	From	To	type=route_master	Note
Regional services (operated with class 387, service=regional)
GN1	London Kings Cross	Kings Lynn
GN2	London Kings Cross	Cambridge		slow service
GN3	London Kings Cross	Peterborough		Limited service
Suburban services (operated with class 717, service=commuter)
GN4	Moorgate	Stevenage		via Hertford North
GN5	Moorgate	Welwyn Garden City

South Western Railway

For SWR services, use "SW xx" as the ref where xx is the first 2 digits of the "headcode" in the timetable, still shown on the class 455 trains.

Use service=commuter for commuter services (served by red trains in SWT era), service=regional for regional services (served by blue trains in SWT era), and service=long_distance for Waterloo - Exeter / Weymouth services (served by white trains in SWT era).

ref=*	From	To	type=route_master	Note
Mainline services
SW 62 / SW 63	London Waterloo / Reading / Basingstoke	Salisbury / Yeovil Junction / Exeter St Davids	9973389 9973389	West of England Line services, SW 62 for fast services between Basingstoke & Salisbury, SW 63 for slow services
SW 91 / SW 92 / SW 94	London Waterloo / Basingstoke / Winchester	Southampton / Bournemouth / Poole / Weymouth	13193208 13193208	South West Main Line long-distance services, SW 91 for fast services between Southampton & Bournemouth, SW 92 for semi-fast and slow services, SW 94 for Southampton - Waterloo peak hour services
SW 84 / SW 92 / SW 93	London Waterloo / Winchester / Eastleigh	Portsmouth Harbour	13445989 13445989	Eastleigh - Fareham Line services, SW 84 on weekdays, SW 92 on Sundays (combined with Poole trains), SW 93 for twice-daily slow services combined with Basingstoke suburban services
SW 72 / SW 81 / SW 83	London Waterloo	Haslemere / Portsmouth & Southsea / Portsmouth Harbour	11582375 11582375	Portsmouth Direct Line services, SW 81 for fast services, SW 72 for weekday slow services to Portsmouth & Southsea, SW 83 for Sunday slow services to Portsmouth Harbour
Suburban services
SW 87 / SW 89	London Waterloo	London Waterloo		via Hounslow, SW 87 for anti-clockwise services, SW 89 for clockwise services
SW 58	London Waterloo	Windsor & Eton Riverside	8862704 8862704
SW 38	London Waterloo	Reading	8862245 8862245
SW 13	London Waterloo	Weybridge	9679140 9679140	via Virginia Water
SW 21 / SW 32	London Waterloo	London Waterloo	8863909 8863909	via Strawberry Hill, SW 21 for clockwise services, SW 32 for anti-clockwise services
SW 24 / SW 47	London Waterloo	Shepperton	8864019 8864019	SW 24 via Kingston, SW 47 via Richmond
SW 30	London Waterloo	Hampton Court	8609805 8609805
SW 10	London Waterloo	Woking		Monday - Saturday service (replaced with SW 75 on Sunday)
SW 64	London Waterloo	Basingstoke
SW 51	London Waterloo	Alton	11582318 11582318
SW 75	London Waterloo	Guildford		Sunday service, via Woking
SW 42	London Waterloo	Guildford	8618229 8618229	via Cobham & Stoke D'Abernon
SW 16	London Waterloo	Guildford	8607835 8607835	via Bookham
SW 17	London Waterloo	Dorking	8607835 8607835
non-London local services
SW 45	Salisbury	Romsey	172798 172798	via Southampton Central & Chandlers Ford
SW 97	Brockenhurst	Lymington Pier	13370641 13370641	Lymington Flyer
SW 75	Southampton Central	Portsmouth & Southsea	2239422 2239422	Stopping services - Fast services are provided by GWR Portsmouth - Cardiff route
SW 29	Guildford	Farnham	11582245 11582245	Ends at Farnham on Mon - Sat, Ascot on Sun
SW 28	Ascot	Aldershot	11582240 11582240

Lines

See List of UK railway lines for names of railway lines.

New Lines (Proposed and Under Construction)

• HighSpeed 2
• Crossrail

Sources

The data can come from GPS traces submitted to OpenStreetMap (try searching the traces page for train, railway or rail), or from NPE Maps or landsat imagery. When tracing from NPE/landsat, do not use copyright sources to figure out if the line is still there or not. Instead, either use local knowledge, or other compatible map sources such as the OS Opendata

Surveying by train

Trains known to permit GPS reception

Unless otherwise specified, you'll need your GPS to be by the window on these trains to get a good lock.

• Turbostars (170/168), Turbos (165/166), Sprinters (15x), Pacers (14x) - used on non-electrified regional routes.
• Wessex Electrics (442)
• Slamdoor electric
• High Speed Train ('InterCity 125', 43)
• Great Western Adelante (180)
• Eurostar
• Electrostar classes 357/375/376/377/378/387
• DLR trains - NaviGPS users need to stand by the door, with the GPS horizontal, just above the bottom of the window
• Underground trains (tested on sub-surface and tube) - only when they can see the sky though!
• Caledonian Sleeper and other Mk2/Mk3 hauled stock
• 'InterCity 225', BR Mark 4 carriages
• Scotrail 'Sprinter' - depending on GPS unit (156/158).
• Desiro classes 350/360/444/450
• Desiro City classes 700/707/717 - reception only possible close to the window

Trains known not to permit GPS reception

• Voyager (220/221)
  • MML Meridians (222)
• Pendolino (390) - rumoured that the vestibule windows may be ok
• Eurotunnel enclosed shuttle trains, though freight shuttles may work outside the tunnel.

See also

• List of London Underground stations
• OpenRailwayMap
• Railway stations in the United Kingdom
• Minor Railways in the United Kingdom
• Railway lines in the United Kingdom