In British practice, railway directions are usually described as "up" and "down", with "up" being towards a major location.
In most of Scotland, with the exception of the West and East Coast Main Lines, and the Borders Railway, "up" is towards Edinburgh.
On the Northern Ireland Railways network, "up" generally means toward Belfast (the specific zero milepost varying from line to line); except for cross-border services to Dublin, where Belfast is "down".
Hence the down Night Riviera runs to Penzance and the up Flying Scotsman to London King's Cross.
In Japan, railway directions are referred to as "up" (上り, Nobori) and "down" (下り, Kudari), and these terms are widely employed in timetables,[3] as well as station announcements and signage.
For other, private railway operators, the designation of "up" or "down" (if at all) usually relies on where the company is headquartered as "up".
This usage is problematic where more than one route to London exists (e.g. at Exeter St Davids via Salisbury or Bristol, or Edinburgh Waverley).
In France, railway directions are usually described as Pair and Impair (meaning Even and Odd), corresponding to Up and Down in the British system.
With rail traffic in Poland operating on the right-hand side, down/odd tracks are usually on the right on double-track lines, and signalling equipment numbering follows this.
For circle routes, the directions may indicate clockwise or counterclockwise (anti-clockwise) bound trains.
The same practice is used for circle routes in Japan, such as the Yamanote Line in Tokyo and the Osaka Loop Line, where directions are usually referred to as "outer" (外回り, soto-mawari) and "inner" (内回り, uchi-mawari), in a system where trains go clockwise on the outer track and counter-clockwise on the inner track.
In the United States, most railroads use "east and west", and it is unusual for a railroad to designate "north and south" (the New York City Subway, the Chicago "L", and the Washington Metro are rare examples).
In New York City, the terms uptown and downtown are used in the subway to refer to northbound and southbound respectively.
[8] The nominal railroad direction is determined by how the line will travel when it enters Manhattan.
For railways in China that are not connected with Beijing, north and west are used as "up", and east and south as "down".
As trains in Germany usually drive on the right side, the Regelgleis is typically the right-side track, with some exceptions.
As the use of the word "false" implied that it was wrong to drive on it, Deutsche Bahn considered changing the names to "Right" and "Left" track.
However, this would have led to some cases where the "Right" track would be on the left side of the line and vice versa.