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British rail journeys: the West Highland, Highland Main, Dartmoor and East Coast lines

Four British lines on GONOM, from Victorian builders and the Beeching cuts to the 2021 reopening of the Dartmoor Line, and what to watch for in each cab film.

Four lines, four chapters of British railway history

Britain built the first public railways and then, in the twentieth century, closed a large part of them. The four British lines on GONOM cover that story almost from end to end. The East Coast Main Line between York and Newcastle grew out of the railway boom of the 1840s. The Highland Main Line was pushed through the Grampians in the 1860s. The Dartmoor Line reached Okehampton in 1871, and the Mallaig extension of the West Highland Line, was authorised in 1894 but opened only in April 1901, a few months after Queen Victoria's death.

All four survived the closures of the 1960s, though not unchanged, and one of them, the Dartmoor Line, lost its regular passenger trains for almost fifty years before getting them back in 2021. Watched together, the films show a busy trunk route built for speed, a long single-track crossing of the Highlands, a short rural line brought back to life and a remote extension to a fishing harbour on the Atlantic coast.

The Victorian builders

On the York to Newcastle route, the stretch from York to Darlington opened in 1841, but its company had run out of money there. George Hudson, the York financier known as the Railway King, promoted the link onward, and the line opened through to Gateshead in 1844, five years before inquiries into his finances brought him down. Robert Stephenson's High Level Bridge over the Tyne, with the railway on the upper deck and a road below, was opened by Queen Victoria in 1849. The eleven-arch Durham Viaduct, designed by Thomas Elliot Harrison, was finished in 1857.

The Highland Main Line was the work of Joseph Mitchell, who had started out under Thomas Telford as chief inspector of Highland roads and bridges and had walked the whole route himself. Parliament first rejected the scheme over fears about braking trains on the long gradients, but once it was authorised in 1861, the 104 miles from Forres to Dunkeld were built in 23 months. On the West Highland extension, Robert McAlpine, known as Concrete Bob, built the Glenfinnan Viaduct in 1897 and 1898 from mass concrete with no metal reinforcement.

Beeching and the lines that nearly went

In March 1963 Richard Beeching's report, The Reshaping of British Railways, identified 2,363 stations and about 5,000 miles of line for closure. Lines through the Scottish Highlands were largely kept, partly because of pressure from the Highland lobby, but the West Highland Line still faced possible closure in 1963 and again in 1995. On the Highland Main Line, the original route north from Aviemore to Forres closed in 1965; part of it now survives as the heritage Strathspey Railway, which shares Aviemore station. Much of the main line was reduced to single track in the 1960s, and 23 miles between Blair Atholl and Dalwhinnie were doubled again in 1976.

Devon fared worse. Beeching proposed cutting the Exeter to Plymouth line back to Okehampton; the link onward to Plymouth went in 1968, and regular passenger trains to Okehampton stopped in 1972. The track survived because it served Meldon Quarry, a British Rail ballast quarry a few miles beyond the town, and from 1997 to 2019 the line carried heritage trains and summer Sunday services.

The Dartmoor Line comes back

In 2021 the Dartmoor Line became the first scheme of the government's Restoring Your Railway programme. Network Rail took it over, laid more than 18 km of new track, and regular trains returned on 20 November 2021, about half a century after they had stopped. Use was far higher than expected, with around 250,000 journeys in the first year. Today it is a working local railway for commuters, students and shoppers, and an easy way onto the moor for walkers and cyclists.

GONOM's film runs from Okehampton to Exeter St Davids and shows the traces of the long gap. Watch for the disused platform at Sampford Courtenay, opened in 1867 as Okehampton Road, and for North Tawton and Bow, whose stations closed with the line and have not reopened. At Coleford Junction the single track joins the Tarka Line coming down from Barnstaple, and Crediton is the only intermediate stop still served before the train follows the valley into Exeter.

Landscapes and what to watch in the films

The West Highland film, from Fort William to Mallaig, starts beneath Ben Nevis and crosses the Caledonian Canal slowly on the swing bridge at Banavie. It follows the long shore of Loch Eil, and at Glenfinnan the view down Loch Shiel to the monument opens on the left as the train curves onto the viaduct. Further on come the sea lochs of Arisaig, the islands of Eigg and Rum on a clear day, and the white sands at Morar. The line is worked by radio signalling controlled from Banavie, so trains wait at loops for each other.

The Highland Main Line film runs south from Inverness. Look for the Culloden Viaduct over the River Nairn, the moorland of Slochd Summit, the Cairngorms above Aviemore and then the empty Pass of Drumochter, where Druimuachdar Summit, at 452 m, is the highest point on Britain's main-line network. The York to Newcastle film is a different kind of railway: long, straight running across the Vale of York, four-track sections near Northallerton where fast trains overtake freight, the cathedral and castle seen from the viaduct at Durham, and the Tyne crossing on the King Edward VII Bridge of 1906, with the High Level Bridge just downstream.

Seasons and getting there from London

The West Highland Line is best from May to September for long days, or in autumn for the colours of bracken and birch, and the Jacobite steam train runs between Fort William and Mallaig from May to October. The Highland Main Line is green from late spring to autumn, and winter can bring snow over Drumochter. The Dartmoor Line looks its best from spring to autumn, when the Devon fields and hedgerows are green, while the East Coast Main Line is a year-round railway whose interest lies in its engineering and towns as much as its views.

From London, York and Newcastle are on the East Coast Main Line out of King's Cross, and LNER's Highland Chieftain runs from King's Cross all the way to Inverness. The Caledonian Sleeper runs overnight between Inverness and Euston, and Exeter St Davids is on the line from Paddington. All three terminals appear on GONOM's London Underground map, where six Tube lines meet beneath King's Cross St Pancras. Check the operators' journey planners before you go, since through services change.

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