| abstract | - The South Western Main Line is a railway line between London Waterloo and Weymouth on the Dorset coast, in the south of England. It is a major railway which serves many important commuter areas, as well as the major settlements of Southampton and Bournemouth. It runs through Greater London, Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset. It has many branches, including the lines to Reading, Dorking, Guildford, Portsmouth, Kingston-upon-Thames and the West of England Main Line, which shares the route between London and Basingstoke. Together with these, it forms part of the network built by London and South Western Railway, which today is mostly operated by South West Trains. Network Rail refer to it as the South West Mainline. Many sections of the line are relatively high-speed, with large stretches cleared for mph () running. The London end of the line has as many as eight tracks, but this narrows to four throughout most of the London suburbs and continues this way until Worting Junction near Basingstoke, from where most of the remainder of the line is two tracks. A couple of miles from the Waterloo terminus, the line runs alongside the Brighton Main Line, both lines pass through Clapham Junction - the busiest station in Europe (and one of the busiest in the world) by railway traffic.
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