A principal railway corridor that carries heavy volumes of long-distance freight or passenger traffic between major regions or terminals. Branch lines and secondary routes feed into the trunk line, which is usually engineered with multiple tracks, heavy rail, and high-speed signaling to handle dense, continuous movements.
Heard on the job
All the grain traffic from the branch lines gets consolidated at the junction before heading east on the trunk line.
Also heard as
- main line
Do not mix it up with
- Branch line: A trunk line is the main artery of the network, whereas a branch line is a smaller secondary route that feeds into it.