About this journey

Stockholm Central station serves as the northern terminus for the Ostkustbanan, where tracks facing north handle long-distance services toward Uppsala, Gävle, and Sundsvall. The line stretches 402 kilometres in total, making it one of Sweden's principal mainline railways. Its earliest section, between Stockholm and Uppsala, opened on 20 September 1866 as part of the Northern Main Line, while the northern reach from Gävle through to Sundsvall followed in 1927, built by a company jointly owned by the government and the cities it served.

The Class X55, known under the designation X3000, covers the full length of the route in a single working. North of Gävle the line runs close to the Baltic coastal lowlands, and this section has shown vulnerability to severe weather: in August 2023, Storm Hans caused an embankment to collapse between Iggesund and Hudiksvall, derailing a northbound service. The journey ends at Sundsvall station, where the coastal character of the northern corridor gives way to a city that was one of the driving forces behind the 1927 extension. The contrast between the well-established southern corridor, in operation since the nineteenth century, and the more exposed northern stretch built a generation later defines the character of the Ostkustbanan as a whole.