On which train journey did J.K. Rowling first develop the idea for Harry Potter?

J.K. Rowling first developed the idea for Harry Potter during a train journey from Manchester to London.

Rowling has described the idea arriving in 1990 while she was traveling on a delayed train. She imagined a boy who did not know he was a wizard, and the concept grew into the Harry Potter series over the following years.

The journey is often simplified as “a train ride,” but the route is significant: it ran from Manchester to London. Rowling later wrote that she spent much of the journey thinking about the characters and setting because she did not have a pen available at the moment the ideas began forming.

This origin story is separate from the later myth that the entire first novel was written on a train. Rowling developed the idea there, but the manuscript was written over a much longer period and in multiple locations.