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The Highland Chieftain is one of the four named passenger trains operated by East Coast

East Coast (train operating company)

East Coast is a British train operating company running high-speed passenger services on the East Coast Main Line between London, Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland...

 on the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 National Rail

National Rail

National Rail is a title used by the Association of Train Operating Companies as a generic term to define the passenger rail services operated in Great Britain...

 network. East Coast runs one train a day each way between London King's Cross and Inverness

Inverness railway station

Inverness railway station is the railway station serving the Scottish city of Inverness.- History :Opened on 5 November 1855 as the western terminus of the Inverness and Nairn Railway, it is now the terminus of the Highland Main Line, the Aberdeen-Inverness Line , the Kyle of Lochalsh Line and the...

 on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). Both services are named the Highland Chieftain and are operated by diesel-powered InterCity 125 High Speed Trains

InterCity 125

The InterCity 125 was the brand name of British Rail's High Speed Train fleet. The InterCity 125 train is made up of two power cars, one at each end of a fixed formation of Mark 3 carriages, and is capable of , making the train the fastest diesel-powered locomotive in regular service in the...

 (HST) as the route is not electrified

Overhead lines

Overhead lines or overhead wires are used to transmit electrical energy to trams, trolleybuses or trains at a distance from the energy supply point...

 north of Edinburgh

Edinburgh Waverley railway station

Edinburgh Waverley railway station is the main railway station in the Scottish capital Edinburgh. Covering an area of over 25 acres in the centre of the city, it is the second-largest main line railway station in the United Kingdom in terms of area, the largest being...

. Because of the limited number of stops between London and Edinburgh, this service has one of the fastest journey times between the two cities, just two minutes longer than the comparable time with the Flying Scotsman.

The route is one of the longest in Britain at 581 miles and the journey takes around 8 hours (7 hr 55 min southbound, 8 hr 8 min northbound. The increased time for the northbound journey is to allow for conflicting movements on the single-line sections north of Perth

Perth, Scotland

Perth is a town and former city and royal burgh in central Scotland. Located on the banks of the River Tay, it is the administrative centre of Perth and Kinross council area and the historic county town of Perthshire...

) to cover the journey. Also, weekday southbound services do not stop at Peterborough. Longer routes include the Caledonian Sleeper

Caledonian Sleeper

The Caledonian Sleeper is a sleeper train service operated by First ScotRail and one of only two remaining sleeper services running on the railways of Great Britain, the other being the Night Riviera....

 and a CrossCountry

CrossCountry

CrossCountry is the brand name of XC Trains Ltd., a British train operating company owned by Arriva...

 service from to , which covers over 705 miles.

East Coast's three other named services are the Hull Executive, the Northern Lights and the Flying Scotsman

Flying Scotsman (train)

The Flying Scotsman is an express passenger train service that has been running between London and Edinburgh—the capitals of England and Scotland respectively—since 1862...

.

The Future

In Autumn 2010, the local newspaper in the Highlands, the "Inverness Courier," launched a "Save the Chieftain" campaign and online petition. The campaign fears that cost will make the new trains, ordered under the UK government's Inter-City Express programme (which aims to replace the ageing fleet of HSTs), ultimately be electric-only, rather than the dual-mode electro-diesels

Electro-diesel locomotive

An Electro-diesel locomotive is powered either from an electricity supply or by using the onboard diesel engine...

currently under consideration. Given that the Highland Main Line will most likely never be electrified, when the diesel HST's are finally retired, that would be the end of a through train linking London with Inverness (and, of course, Aberdeen and Dundee). Instead, passengers would have to change trains at Edinburgh.

External links

• East Coast website
• National Rail Enquires website - main web portal for UK train fares, times and other travel information