The Didcot and Chester Line
The Didcot and Chester Line links 11 stations, with a top line speed of 90 mph.
See the Didcot and Chester Line on the live map
The map draws the line on its own, names every station along it, and shows the trains running on it right now.
The line in numbers
| Track | about 56 miles, counting every running line |
|---|---|
| Stations | 11 |
| Top line speed | 90 mph |
| Passengers a year | 22.4 million entries and exits across its stations |
| Engineer's Line Reference | DCL |
No end-to-end length is given for this line because OpenStreetMap applies its name to several separate stretches of track, so any figure measured from the map data would be a fragment of the real route rather than the whole of it.
Stations on this line
- Didcot Parkway2.9 million a year
- Appleford9,074 a year
- Culham113,542 a year
- Radley131,590 a year
- Oxford8.1 million a year
- Tackley25,334 a year
- Heyford45,552 a year
- Birmingham Moor Street7.1 million a year
- Birmingham Snow Hill3.2 million a year
- Jewellery Quarter446,292 a year
- The Hawthorns334,428 a year
The busiest station on the line is Oxford, 8.1 million entries and exits a year and 58th busiest in Britain.
Freight on this line, hour by hour
Freight is booked over the Didcot and Chester Line on 1,360 paths in the week beginning 12 October 2026: 258 paths on the Wednesday, 106 paths on the Saturday and 14 paths on the Sunday. 156 of them run whatever the traffic; the rest are held in the timetable and used only when there is something to move. The busiest hour is 17:00 to 18:00 on the Thursday, with 38 paths booked.
The grid counts the goods trains booked to pass in each hour of the week beginning 12 October 2026: the darker the hour, the more paths, and a dot marks an hour with at least one path that runs regardless. Engineering trains, empty stock and light engines are not counted. Across Britain only about a fifth of booked freight paths run on a given day, so a booked path is a possibility rather than a promise; the freight statistics page explains how that is measured.
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Paths booked in the hournone12 to 34 to 78 to 1516 or moreone runs regardless
Lines it meets
Chiltern Main Line, Great Western Main Line, Proof House Junction and Bushbury Junction Line, Rugby Birmingham and Stafford Line.
Passenger figures are the Office of Rail and Road's estimates of station usage for 2024-25, added up across the stations on this line. They count entries and exits at those stations rather than journeys along the line, and a station served by more than one line is counted for each of them.
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