North Berwick Line


The North Berwick Line is a railway line linking Edinburgh with North Berwick in Scotland. The route follows the East Coast Main Line as far as Drem where it then branches to the north.
The section between Drem and Edinburgh Waverley shares the track with the London North Eastern Railway London Kings Cross - Edinburgh Waverley service. It consists of all or part of the following Network Rail routes:
Passenger services are operated by Abellio ScotRail. The line is electrified at 25 kV AC overhead.

Services

Most services run between and, with peak-time services continuing to and two services per day continuing through to and onwards to. Service is generally hourly between 7am and 7pm, with half-hourly service at peak time and on Saturdays, and a reduced hourly service on weekday evenings and Sundays.
Although incorporated into the same timetable from May 2010, ScotRail provide services to ; however, these typically did not stop at intermediate stations. From May 2011, all ScotRail services to/from Dunbar now stop at. These services run two hourly during Mondays-Saturdays with an additional late night service.

Rolling stock

The Class 380 "Desiro" has been using the route since June 2011. They replaced the Class 322's in which they finished service on this line in August the same year after 6 years. They have been cascaded onto the Wakefield Line with Northern Rail. When the Saturday daytime services to Dunbar by Scotrail was introduced in December 2012, the Class 170 "Turbostar" regularly took on these services. Following the Borders Railway construction in September 2015, the Class 158 "Express Sprinter" took over the Dunbar Services. In the December 2017 timetable, the Class 380 took over services to Dunbar on Saturdays which then got replaced by Class 385s in the December 2018 timetable. The class 170 can also sometimes run to North Berwick because of ScotRail's lack of EMUs based in Edinburgh particularly during peak times.
In September 2018, ScotRail services on the North Berwick Line have started using the new Class 385 units. Services are formed of six coaches. The Class 380 units will be cascaded by the end of 2019 to increase capacity on the Ayrshire and Inverclyde Lines to and from Glasgow allowing the 385s to be permanent trains on this route. The introduction of 385s will also reduce the need for diesel units to be borrowed on the line at peak times as a number of 385s are stationed at Millerhill Depot and available for routes such as Glasgow, Stirling and Shotts.

Historical route

As with many contemporary routes, trains on this line run on the metals of several historical routes: