Transport, urbanization and economic development in England and Wales c.1670-1911

Railway stations and network, 1825-2000

The railway data contains a GIS of the rail lines and rail stations of Britain with their opening dates and closing dates from 1825 to the year 2000 plus the London Underground lines, and stations. This GIS is a checked and edited upgrade of the GIS of rail lines and stations created by the team led by Prof. Jordi Martí-Henneberg of the Department of Geography and Sociology, University of Lleida (2006). This was digitised from Michael Cobb's definitive atlas The Railways of Great Britain. In addition to the checks and edits, the current project team have added the lines and stations of the London Underground which was absent from the Lleida GIS. The Underground GIS was created from modern digital data, Douglas Rose's The London Underground: A Diagrammatic History and the Cobb atlas.

The first 3 maps show the railway in 1851, 1881 and 1911. The fourth shows the London rail network including the Underground in 1911.

You can view an animation of the evolution of the railway network