The Highland Main Line
The Highland Main Line runs for 118.2 miles between Inverness and Perth, serving 10 stations, with a top line speed of 100 mph.
See the Highland 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
| Length | 118.2 miles end to end |
|---|---|
| Track | about 161 miles, counting every running line |
| Stations | 10 |
| Top line speed | 100 mph |
| Passengers a year | 2.4 million entries and exits across its stations |
| Engineer's Line Reference | HGL2, HGL1 |
Stations on this line
- Inverness1.2 million a year
- Carrbridge7,020 a year
- Aviemore123,654 a year
- Kingussie42,058 a year
- Newtonmore8,454 a year
- Dalwhinnie3,356 a year
- Blair Atholl16,446 a year
- Pitlochry131,400 a year
- Dunkeld and Birnam61,270 a year
- Perth853,236 a year
The busiest station on the line is Inverness, 1.2 million entries and exits a year and 467th busiest in Britain.
Freight on this line, hour by hour
Freight is booked over the Highland Main Line on 99 paths in the week beginning 12 October 2026: 21 paths on the Wednesday, 6 paths on the Saturday and no paths on the Sunday. 19 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 15:00 to 16:00 on the Thursday, with 6 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
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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