Route
Journey times, operators and connections for the routes we cover. You book with the operator; we show you who runs it and how long it takes.
Journey times and carriers on this route.
direct on two genuinely distinct services from two different London termini to two different Birmingham stations - not duplicate rows for the same journey
Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways
door to door
Private road transfer — availability and price depend on the provider; this is not an offer
direct, routes 400/410/420, roughly every 30 minutes at peak on the busiest service
National Express
The parts people get wrong. Each one links to where we checked it.
Easy to get wrong
Chiltern Railways' own comparison states its fastest Marylebone-Birmingham Moor Street run is 99 minutes against Avanti West Coast's 82-minute Euston-New Street run - these are not interchangeable tickets or stations, so a traveller booked to 'Birmingham' on one operator can end up at the wrong end of the city centre from where they meant to go.
en.wikipedia.org · checked 2026-09-10
Easy to get wrong
Published journey times vary sharply by pickup point and route number - direct services from central Victoria run notably faster than journeys that start from an outer London stop like Golders Green and pick up further passengers before joining the motorway, so a single fixed duration for 'London to Birmingham' by coach would be misleading.
nationalexpress.com · checked 2026-09-10
Fixed fare
National Express advertises fares 'from £7' one-way with limited availability and a booking fee - this is a teaser fare for the cheapest advance seats, not a fixed price, consistent with this file's policy of not publishing dynamic coach pricing as a fixed number.
nationalexpress.com · checked 2026-09-10
Hours
Chiltern's Marylebone-Oxford Parkway-Birmingham service pattern runs about once an hour off-peak, materially less frequent than Avanti's 1-2 trains per hour on the faster West Coast Main Line route.
en.wikipedia.org · checked 2026-09-10