West Coast

This is the biography of the West Coast Main Line, Britain’s busiest mixed-traffic rail route which runs 401 miles from London Euston to Glasgow Central, and published to mark the 175th anniversary of the opening of the first section, the Grand Junction Railway. 


Beginning with the dawn of steam, it tells the story of the engineers who helped to make it one of the world’s fastest – and greatest – railway lines in the age of steam. 


It looks at the many truly magnificent locomotives and rolling stock which have made the route a byword for transport technology excellence, from the London & North Western Railway steam engines which won the Races to the North in the Victorian age to the raw power of William Stanier’s Pacifics and the modern Pendolinos which cover the route in as little as four hours and eight minutes.