The Great Western Main Line
The Great Western Main Line links 33 stations, with a top line speed of 125 mph.
See the Great Western Main 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 399 miles, counting every running line |
|---|---|
| Stations | 33 |
| Top line speed | 125 mph |
| Passengers a year | 174.0 million entries and exits across its stations |
| Engineer's Line Reference | MLN1 |
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
- Exeter St Thomas329,086 a year
- Exeter St Davids2.9 million a year
- Marsh Barton108,848 a year
- Starcross107,218 a year
- Dawlish Warren248,086 a year
- Tiverton Parkway682,906 a year
- Bristol Temple Meads10.9 million a year
- Keynsham566,218 a year
- Oldfield Park385,994 a year
- Bath Spa6.5 million a year
- Chippenham1.7 million a year
- Swindon3.2 million a year
- Didcot Parkway2.9 million a year
- Goring & Streatley360,440 a year
- Pangbourne373,542 a year
- Cholsey275,420 a year
- Tilehurst385,312 a year
- Reading14.3 million a year
- Twyford1.8 million a year
- Maidenhead4.9 million a year
- Taplow528,968 a year
- Burnham1.7 million a year
- Slough5.5 million a year
- Langley1.2 million a year
- Iver362,658 a year
- West Drayton3.5 million a year
- Hayes and Harlington8.5 million a year
- Southall7.7 million a year
- Hanwell1.7 million a year
- West Ealing2.5 million a year
- Ealing Broadway15.5 million a year
- Acton Main Line2.7 million a year
- London Paddington69.9 million a year
The busiest station on the line is London Paddington, 69.9 million entries and exits a year and 3rd busiest in Britain.
Freight on this line, hour by hour
Freight is booked over the Great Western Main Line on 3,854 paths in the week beginning 12 October 2026: 705 paths on the Wednesday, 335 paths on the Saturday and 96 paths on the Sunday. 475 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 05:00 to 06:00 on the Tuesday, with 88 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
Bristol to Exeter Line, Bristol to Taunton Line, Didcot and Chester Line, Elizabeth Line, Marlow Branch Line, North Downs Line, Regatta Line, South Devon Main Line, West of England 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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