Heritage lines, in purple
Preserved railways are drawn in purple, distinct from today's green national network. Open the map with heritage lines highlighted and the standard network steps back, so lines like the Swanage Railway stand out clearly. You can also search a heritage line by name and the map will fly straight to it.
Full lines, not just fragments
Heritage railways are often tagged inconsistently, a running line here, a depot there, so a line can look broken on other maps. We propagate the heritage flag across every segment that shares a line's name, so a railway like Swanage shows in the heritage colour along its whole length rather than in patches. Narrow-gauge lines such as the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch are included too.
Some of the lines you'll find
There are 288 named heritage railways on the map, covering about 1,237 km of preserved track. A few of the best known:
- Ffestiniog Railway
- Welsh Highland Railway
- Severn Valley Railway
- North Yorkshire Moors Railway
- Bluebell Railway
- Great Central Railway
- West Somerset Railway
- East Lancashire Railway
- Keighley & Worth Valley Railway
- Swanage Railway
- Strathspey Railway
- South Devon Railway
- Bo'ness & Kinneil Railway
- The Watercress Line
Search any of them by name and the map flies straight to it. Narrow-gauge lines are in here too, from the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch on the Kent coast to the slate railways of North Wales.
Where the data comes from
Heritage lines come from OpenStreetMap, flagged where contributors have tagged a railway as preserved or as tourism/heritage use. As with the rest of the map, it is real surveyed data, not invented.
Once closed, now reopened
Many heritage railways are stretches of line that were once closed and abandoned before being reopened, and they often run through former stations that have been brought back to life. Switch those layers on to see the bigger picture. You can also watch live trains running on today's network, or see the London Underground in real geography.