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, East Coast Main Line; LNER's fastest workings and the open-access, no-frills Lumo service both run King's Cross-Newcastle without a change
London North Eastern Railway, Lumo
door to door
Private road transfer — availability and price depend on the provider; this is not an offer
direct, route 426, up to 7-9 times a day
National Express
The parts people get wrong. Each one links to where we checked it.
Easy to get wrong
Lumo is a genuinely separate open-access operator (owned by FirstGroup, headquartered in Newcastle) running its own all-electric trains on the same East Coast Main Line tracks as LNER - it is not an LNER sub-brand, and its tickets are not interchangeable with LNER's.
en.wikipedia.org · checked 2026-09-10
Hours
The fastest advertised journey from Golders Green is 6 hours 35 minutes - by far the longest single National Express corridor in this file, reflecting the roughly 280-mile road distance versus the East Coast Main Line's more direct rail alignment.
nationalexpress.com · checked 2026-09-10
Hours
LNER's fastest King's Cross-Newcastle journeys take about 2 hours 37 minutes, but average journeys including more stops run closer to 3 hours 14 minutes - the fastest figure applies to a limited number of daily workings.
lner.co.uk · checked 2026-09-10
Easy to get wrong
This coach and the LNER/Lumo rail corridor documented separately in this file are entirely separate products - the coach takes over twice as long as the fastest direct train, so it mainly serves budget-conscious or coach-committed travellers rather than being a genuine time-competitive alternative.
nationalexpress.com · checked 2026-09-10