Great Britain railway series

Timetables since 1948

The railways in Great Britain were nationalised in 1948.  British Railways was initially organised into six regions and timetable production was on a regional basis. Scotland had hitherto been divided between two of the Big 4 railway companies - the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMSR) and the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) - but now was its own discrete region.   The LNER was further broken up to into Eastern and North Eastern regions.

Various boundary changes were made over the years as BR's modernisation developed, and the Eastern and North Eastern regions were merged in 1967.

It took until 1974 before a unified national timetable was produced.  The large format books covered a whole year from May, and relied on various supplements to cope with change.  A smaller format was adopted 1982 - described as "handy", but still 1164 pages.  In 1986, publication switched to twice-yearly, usually late-May and late-September.

A form of privatisation of the railways took place from 1994.  The timetable became the Great Britain Passenger Railway Timetable, published initially by Railtrack - the shareholder-owned infrastructure company.  The railways grew strongly - and the timetable with it.  There were two occasions when the book had to be split into Parts 1 and 2, sold together.

Network Rail - an arms-length public body - took over from Railtrack in 2003.  The timetable continued in printed form until 2007, with the final May 2007 edition reaching a chunky 3188 pages.  From December 2007, an electronic railway timetable (ERT) took over, being a PDF download. Alternative publishers, including TSO and the Middleton Press, brought out printed versions to meet the residual demand from customers, but the ventures quickly faded as the interactive timetables from National Rail Enquiries and The Trainline gained favour.

Early PDFs were single files, and were challenging to download on the dial-up connections then prevalent.  Later editions were split into individual files per table.  The former searchability became less straightforward.

Timetable World's coverage

Approximately 340 timetable books have been issued since 1948, excluding supplements - and not including leaflets, employee timetables and the like.  It has taken a while for Timetable World to assemble a set of originals, and we got there in January 2023.

It takes time to digitise such a vast quantity of material:

  • Complete coverage of the national editions from 1974 - September 2022
  • The 1948-1973 timetables available for all regions released with gaps - November 2022
  • All-bar-18 timetables released - end-2022
  • Remaining 18 items sourced and published - 1st February 2023

These are now available to purchase on this page and in the Timetable World Shop.  You can download ERTs free-of-charge from here as we did not digitise them.

In most cases, there is a single PDF for each edition.  Pullout maps, if available, are a separate file.  A few timetables have "extras" thrown in.  The scans are generally good, but some editions have been annotated, stamped, or otherwise marked by a previous owner.  The contents have had optical character recognition (OCR) applied with satisfactory results, which makes the PDF searchable.  The font originally used sometimes means that the OCR cannot reliably distinguish "I" between I, L, and 1 (one).

File sizes range from 200Mb to 1Gb. Downloads times will depend on your broadband service and we recommend downloading to a desktop computer with plenty of space, not to a phone or tablet.  You have 7 days to complete the download, and can retry if it fails.  Important:  the files may appear to open quickly on the computer but search can take a while longer to become available whilst the embedded database continues to load behind the scenes.

After purchase, you will receive an email containing your unique download link.

Purchases are for your personal use.  Please do not share them.  All revenues go to the Timetable World project and help fund the growing electricity bill for the servers.

Any queries, contact:

email

Looking for working (employee) timetables (WTTs?).  Visit Great Britain Working Timetables.

For 1923-47 timetables ...

There is a separate page for 1923-47 timetables covering the "Big Four" - London & North Eastern Railway, London, Midland & Scottish Railway, Great Western Railway, and Southern Railway.    Visit The "Big Four" 1923-1947.

Electronic Timetables (ERT)

Free downloads

The ERTs are PDF originals prepared by Network Rail.

The service commenced with the 2007 Winter timetable.

* The 2020-12 Edition was cancelled during the COVID pandemic.

2007-12 2008-05 2008-12 2009-05 2009-12 2010-05 2010-12 2011-05 2011-12 2012-05 2012-12 2013-05
2013-12 2014-05 2014-12 2015-05 2015-12 2016-05 2016-12 2017-05 2017-12 2018-05 2018-12 2019-05
2019-12 2020-05 2020-12* 2021-05 2021-12 2022-05 2022-12 2023-05 2023-12 2024-05

National Timetables 1974 - 2007 (Summer)

Downloads £10 each

The national timetable was introduced in 1974 and published by British Rail, Railtrack, and Network Rail.  Initially an annual publication, the timetable became twice-yearly from 1986.

Timetable World scanned these books.  Your purchases help to fund the project.

 

British Rail 1974-05 1975-05 1976-05 1977-05 1978-05 1979-05 1980-05 1981-06 1982-05 1983-05 1984-05 1985-05
1986-05 1986-09 1987-05 1987-10 1988-05 1988-10 1989-05 1989-10 1990-05 1990-10 1991-05 1991-10
1992-05 1992-10 1993-05 1993-10
Railtrack 1994-05 1994-10 1995-05 1995-10 1996-05 1996-10 1997-05 1997-10 1998-05 1998-09 1999-05 1999-10
2000-05 2000-10 2001-05 2001-10 2002-05 2002-10
Network Rail 2003-05 2003-10 2004-05 2004-10 2005-05 2005-10 2006-05 2006-10 2007-05

Regional Timetables 1948 - 1973

Downloads

Regional timetables were produced for six regions until 1967 when the North Eastern Region was merged with the Eastern Region, thereafter five.

Timetable World scanned these books.  Your purchases help to fund the project.

We are grateful to Conrad Smith, Roger Merry-Price, Charlotte Claxton, Paul Hadley and Jonathan Roberts for their recent assistance in filling the final few gaps.

Bundles (5 or 6 timetables): £15 each

Summer timetables usually start in May, Winter in September.  Bundles are priced at 50-58% below the individual prices.

1948SummerWinter1961SummerWinter
1949SummerWinter1962SummerWinter
1950SummerWinter1963SummerWinter
1951SummerWinter1964SummerWinter
1952SummerWinter1965Annual
1953SummerWinter1966Annual
1954SummerWinter1967Annual
1955SummerWinter1968Annual
1956SummerWinter1969Annual
1957SummerWinter1970Annual
1958SummerWinter1971Annual
1959SummerWinter1972Annual
1960SummerWinter1973Annual

Individual timetables: £6 each

Eastern 1948-05 1948-09 1949-05 1949-09 1950-06 1950-09 1951-06 1951-09 1952-06 1952-09 1953-06 1953-09
1954-06 1954-09 1955-06 1955-09 1956-06 1956-09 1957-06 1957-09 1958-06 1958-09 1959-06 1959-11
1960-06 1960-09 1961-06 1961-09 1962-06 1962-09 1963-06 1963-09 1964-06 1964-09 1965-06 1966-04
1967-03 1968-05 1969-05 1970-05 1971-05 1972-05 1973-05
North Eastern 1948-05 1948-09 1949-05 1949-09 1950-06 1950-09 1951-06 1951-09 1952-06 1952-09 1953-06 1953-09
1954-06 1954-09 1955-06 1955-09 1956-06 1956-09 1957-06 1957-09 1958-06 1958-09 1959-06 1959-11
1960-06 1960-09 1961-06 1961-09 1962-06 1962-09 1963-06 1963-09 1964-06 1964-09 1965-06 1965-09
1966-04 1966-09 1967-03
Scotland 1948-05 1948-09 1949-05 1949-09 1950-06 1950-09 1951-06 1951-09 1952-06 1952-09 1953-06 1953-09
1954-06 1954-09 1955-06 1955-09 1956-06 1956-09 1957-06 1957-09 1958-06 1958-09 1959-06 1959-11
1960-06 1960-09 1961-06 1961-09 1962-06 1962-09 1963-06 1963-09 1964-06 1964-09 1965-06 1966-04
1967-03 1967-09 1968-05 1969-05 1970-05 1971-05 1972-05 1973-05
London Midland1948-05 1948-09 1949-05 1949-09 1950-06 1950-09 1951-06 1951-09 1952-06 1952-09 1953-06 1953-09
1954-06 1954-09 1955-06 1955-09 1956-06 1956-09 1957-06 1957-09 1958-06 1958-09 1959-06 1959-11
1960-06 1960-09 1961-06 1961-09 1962-06 1962-09 1963-06 1963-09 1964-06 1964-09 1965-061966-04
1967-03 1968-05 1969-05 1970-05 1971-05 1972-05 1973-05
Western 1948-05 1948-09 1949-05 1949-09 1950-06 1950-09 1951-06 1951-09 1952-06 1952-09 1953-06 1953-09
1954-061954-09 1955-06 1955-09 1956-06 1956-09 1957-06 1957-09 1958-06 1958-09 1959-06 1959-11
1960-06 1960-09 1961-06 1961-09 1962-06 1962-09 1963-06 1963-09 1964-06 1965-01 1965-06 1966-04
1967-03 1968-05 1969-05 1970-05 1971-05 1972-05 1973-05
Southern1948-05 1948-09 1949-05 1949-09 1950-06 1950-09 1951-06 1951-09 1952-06 1952-09 1953-06 1953-09
1954-06 1954-09 1955-06 1955-09 1956-06 1956-09 1957-06 1957-09 1958-06 1958-09 1959-06 1959-11
1960-06 1960-09 1961-06 1961-09 1962-06 1962-09 1963-06 1963-09 1964-06 1964-09 1965-06 1966-04
1967-07 1968-05 1969-05 1970-05 1970-09 1971-05 1971-09 1972-05 1972-09 1973-05