Cornish Main Line
| Cornish Main Line | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Heavy rail |
| System | National Rail |
| Status | Operational |
| Locale | Cornwall, United Kingdom |
| Termini |
Plymouth Penzance |
| Operation | |
| Opened | 1867 |
| Owner | Network Rail |
| Operator(s) |
Great Western Railway CrossCountry (Freight: DB Schenker and Freightliner) |
| Technical | |
| Line length | 79.5 miles (128 km) |
| Number of tracks | Double with two single track sections |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
| Operating speed | 75 mph (121 km/h) maximum |
The Cornish Main Line is a railway line in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It runs from Penzance to Plymouth, crossing from Cornwall into Devon over the famous Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash.
It directly serves Truro, St Austell, Bodmin (by a Parkway station), and Liskeard, and it forms the backbone for rail services in Cornwall, as well as providing a direct line to London, Birmingham, Leeds and Edinburgh. There are branches off the main line serving St Ives, Falmouth, Newquay, and Looe.
It is the southernmost railway line in the United Kingdom, and the westernmost in England.
The Cornish Main Line was originally built by two separate railway companies, the West Cornwall Railway between Truro and Penzance, opened in 1852, and the Cornwall Railway between Plymouth and a separate station in Truro, opened in 1859. The West Cornwall Railway was itself based on the Hayle Railway, opened in 1837 as a purely local mineral railway.
Rail travel from Penzance to London was possible from 1860 when the West Cornwall company was given access to the Cornwall Railway’s Truro station, but the West Cornwall trains were standard gauge and the Cornwall Railway was broad gauge, so through passengers had to change trains there and goods had to be transhipped into wagons of the other gauge at Truro.
The impecunious West Cornwall company sold its railway to the more powerful broad gauge Associated Companies, dominated by the Great Western Railway, and the new owners converted the West Cornwall line to broad gauge. Through goods trains started running in 1866 and passenger trains in 1867.
The Associated Companies merged into the Great Western Railway, and in 1892 the Great Western converted all its broad gauge track to standard gauge, a process called the gauge conversion.
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Wikipedia