We keep Britain connected, helping people reach the places they need to be – be that work, school, hospital, weddings, holidays or visiting friends.
Getting you where you need to be
We’ve created a railway that helps you get where you need to be safely, quickly and sustainably. Every week almost 145,500 trains run on our railway.
And we’re proud to be part of the fabric of neighbourhoods across Britain – almost one in three people live within 500 metres of our railway. Our 20,000 miles of track connect all parts of Britain.
Improving your journeys
We know how important it is for you to arrive on time. That’s why we’ve worked with every train operating company on our railway to give you more reliable journeys.
And we know even a small delay can have a huge impact on your day. We’ve halved the number of service-affecting infrastructure failures over the last 25 years. The number of failures have halved to about 25,000 a year – leading to fewer delays.
Building homes
We’re also using our land to build homes in the places you want to live. We’ve helped build 17,000 houses in the past five years – that’s more than all local authorities in England combined. It makes us England’s fifth biggest housebuilder.
We plan to build another 20,000 homes in London in the next decade. And we’re working with partners like Homes England, BlocWork and Transport for Greater Manchester to free up land for housebuilding and support building jobs throughout Britain.
Case study: growing our railway
We’re growing our railway to help you live more independent lives and become less reliant on cars.
We partnered with Transport for London on the Crossrail project since 2009. The Elizabeth line is now one of the busiest in the England, with 210m journeys made a year.
We’re also partnering with HS2 and East West Rail to connect their new lines to the railway. And we’re working with regional partners on Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Midlands Rail Hub.
We also opening smaller lines and new stations across Britain.
We opened the Dartmoor Line in Devon in 2021 in partnership with the Department for Transport and our industry partners. The new services are hugely popular, 550,000 journeys were made in the first two years of the line opening.
Across Scotland, we worked with Transport Scotland to connect communities in Leven in Fife, East Linton, Kintore and Reston. More than 225,000 journeys were made in the first three years of opening the new Kintore station.
We’ve also built 25 new stations in the last 10 years including Portway Parkway in Bristol, Pye Corner in Newport, Wales, Ilkeston in Derbyshire and Inverness Airport station in Inverness.
Case study: making stations for everyone
We’re installed British Sign Language touch screens and global positioning system (GPS) guides to help deaf and blind passengers at all 20 of our managed stations. The touch screens share up-to-date sign language travel information.
We recently invested £800,000 in building an Assisted Travel Lounge at Manchester Piccadilly station. The lounge includes accessible seating, toilets and a sensory space.
We’re also helping people with less visible difficulties. We launched stoma-friendly toilet facilities at London Paddington station.
Case study: the Levenmouth rail link
We reconnected the passenger railway in Levenmouth, Fife for the first time in more than 50 years on Sunday 2 June. The project included laying 19 kilometres of single-track and building two new stations along the line.
Dr Allen Armstrong, chair of the Levenmouth Rail Campaign, said: “Levenmouth is back on the map
and regeneration prospects aided by this, and other projects in the pipeline, are brighter now.”
