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Firstly, we know the train leaves King's Cross Station at precisely 11 o'clock on the morning of every September 1st and travels to Hogsmeade Station, which is somewhere in Scotland.

We also know from Scotlandinfo.eu that in Scotland the sun sets on September 1st at 8:19pm on average. The actual time is either later or earlier depending on where in Scotland Hogsmeade is located. Since September 1st is before the winter equinox (September 22nd or 23rd) the further north we get the later the sunset is going to be (although not by much since we are fairly close to the date of the equinox).

Finally, we know the train arrives in Hogsmeade on September 1st after sunset.

So in conclusion the train ride should be at least 9 hours long, but do we have a better estimate or know the actual time?

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  • 23
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest this is one of the things where you've thought about it a lot more than JKR.
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 9:40
  • 20
    About 9 3⁄4 hours ;)
    – Shreedhar
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 9:42
  • It depends a lot on where hogwarts is. Its about 6 and a half hours from king cross to Edinburgh (a number that has pretty steady for the last 100 years so I think we can assume it also applys to the hogwarts express). So then its at least 3 hours from there to anywhere that is sutably remote for hogwarts. If somewhere in the north west highlands, kings cross would still make sense, but you could be talking a 12 hour journey overall.
    – user1937198
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 11:30
  • They don't have to stop so maybe they could get the london - edinburgh in 4 hours like the dedicated expresses can.
    – user1937198
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 11:37
  • Calculate 11AM to evening before feast.
    – Doctor Doom
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 17:13

1 Answer 1

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We can deduce much from real world trains & routes of similar type:

The Flying Scotsman, which was the first express train from London to Edinburgh, ran the trip in over ten hours.

By the late 1800s, the time was down to 8 1/2 hours. By the 1930s, when the Hogwarts Express locomotive was built, the time was down to about 7 1/2 hours. Edinburgh is in southern Scotland, and there's still quite a bit of geography to the north.

Sunset at Edinburgh is at 8:07PM and at Inverness, in northern Scotland at 8:14PM on the given day. An approximately nine or ten hour train ride using a 1930s era steam locomotive seems entirely plausible and would get the students to a Highlands location sometime after sunset. Modern trains from London to Inverness take about 12 hours, leaving one to imagine that Hogsmeade is not quite that far north, but also, there are no stops along the way. So they'd reach somewhere between Edinburgh and Inverness at around 9:00PM. Just in time for a feast!

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    @user1937198 the train exists at a station platform and on a track that is invisible/separate from what Muggles can see. Platform 9 and 3/4 does not exist in the normal muggle world... it's in its own magical pocket dimension like many other things (Grimmauld Place, Leaky Cauldron, etc.).
    – TylerH
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 20:17
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    The 19th century history in this post is correct, but to any Brit with memories of the steam era, "Flying Scotsman" of course means the Gresley A1 class locomotive number 1472 (later renumbered 4472). The 7 1/2 hour time in the early 20th century included speed restrictions designed to maintain "fair competition" between the east and west coast line journey times, and there was no technical reason why it could not have been 7 hours from the start of the service hauled by A1 class locomotives, as it became when the restrictions were removed.
    – alephzero
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 20:21
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    ... The films used a historical engine and carriages from the slower west coast main line service and 42 miles of the west-coast route in Scotland from Fort William to Mallaig, not the faster London-Edinburgh route,.
    – alephzero
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 20:25
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    @TylerH And for that matter Hogwarts itself, the Ministry, the Quidditch World Cup stadium, and all other "wizarding world" locations. We muggles have detailed aerial and satellite photography of most of the world. There's no way we would have missed such prominent locations unless they exist in some alternate dimension we can't detect.
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Dec 18, 2020 at 20:44
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    @DarrelHoffman it's explicit said that they have spells on so Muggles can't see them
    – OrangeDog
    Commented Nov 2, 2022 at 17:42

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