All The Stations
August 30, 2017 4:51 AM Subscribe
Vicki Pipe and Geoff Marshall have now completed their quest to visit all the rail stations in Great Britain, taking 14 weeks, 6 days, 8 hours and 22 minutes. The crowdfunded odyssey was recorded in charming
series of videos .
Highlights include arriving at one of the UK's least used stations with more people than had used the station in the rest of the year, scenic spots with typical British weather, beautiful drone footage, fascinating forays into the towns and cities served by rail and interesting features on the UK rail infrastructure.
Highlights include arriving at one of the UK's least used stations with more people than had used the station in the rest of the year, scenic spots with typical British weather, beautiful drone footage, fascinating forays into the towns and cities served by rail and interesting features on the UK rail infrastructure.
For those in Britain, you can see when they visited your station using the map. Northern Ireland and Ireland maybe to follow according to the team.
Geoff also has form in this area, being two-time world record holder for the fastest visit to all the London Underground stops.
posted by firesine at 5:02 AM on August 30, 2017
Geoff also has form in this area, being two-time world record holder for the fastest visit to all the London Underground stops.
posted by firesine at 5:02 AM on August 30, 2017
Great stuff, and as luck would have it, the linked video that visited Shippea Hill is also the one that included my home town, Hitchin.
posted by kcds at 5:40 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by kcds at 5:40 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Looks like they visited even the really weird stations like IBM and Lympstone Commando.
posted by grouse at 6:53 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by grouse at 6:53 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I've loved finding out about the technically-public-but-not-really stations like Stanlow and Thornton which is in the middle of an oil refinery. I'd missed Lympstone Commando - very interesting!
posted by firesine at 7:12 AM on August 30, 2017
posted by firesine at 7:12 AM on August 30, 2017
Nice work! Shame they didn't get as far as the Isle of Wight.
posted by ambrosen at 9:16 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by ambrosen at 9:16 AM on August 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm flabbergasted to learn that there are over 2500 passenger stations in Great Britain. I mean, I knew there were a lot, and I knew that their rail service puts ours in the US to shame, but that's just crazy. I did some back-of-the-envelope math, and if the US has as many stations per square mile as that, we'd have around 103,000.
If we built rail lines along every road that's considered to be part of the Federal Highway system, that would average out to a station every mile and a half or so on every line. I'm not at all sure how many trains you'd need, in order to hit all of these theoretical stations on a regular basis. The mind boggles. I mean, it sounds amazingly great to me. But utterly infeasible as well. Great Britain, I am jealous.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:07 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
If we built rail lines along every road that's considered to be part of the Federal Highway system, that would average out to a station every mile and a half or so on every line. I'm not at all sure how many trains you'd need, in order to hit all of these theoretical stations on a regular basis. The mind boggles. I mean, it sounds amazingly great to me. But utterly infeasible as well. Great Britain, I am jealous.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:07 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think stations per capita is probably a better metric, in which case you only need about 12,500, so one for every 10-15 miles of highway. I'd say that matches the spacing in Great Britain.
It is a relatively dense network, though, even after 50% of the stations and 33% of the mileage was closed in the 1960s. Frequency and price and crowding are weak points, and punctuality is mediocre, by European standards.
posted by ambrosen at 10:18 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
It is a relatively dense network, though, even after 50% of the stations and 33% of the mileage was closed in the 1960s. Frequency and price and crowding are weak points, and punctuality is mediocre, by European standards.
posted by ambrosen at 10:18 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Geoff Marshall was an early proponent of crowd-funding, deciding he wanted an iPod and collecting 50ps from friends on a UK conferencing system in exchange for the right to put one piece of music on the thing.
It would have been cruel to decide that a good investment of that 50p would be Metal Machine Music. Cruel, but irresistible.
posted by Devonian at 10:49 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
It would have been cruel to decide that a good investment of that 50p would be Metal Machine Music. Cruel, but irresistible.
posted by Devonian at 10:49 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
So happy, such nice people. I've been a fan of both since before they were event a thing. Possibly my happiest kickstarter contribution ever.
posted by Cosine at 12:18 PM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Cosine at 12:18 PM on August 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
Their quest makes a lot more sense than visiting every Cracker Barrel in the U.S.
posted by LeLiLo at 12:37 PM on August 31, 2017
posted by LeLiLo at 12:37 PM on August 31, 2017
Best Binge Watch 2017 (so far), hands down.
posted by the painkiller at 9:21 AM on September 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by the painkiller at 9:21 AM on September 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
...Is there really no consensus on how to say "all the stations" in Welsh?
posted by Chrysostom at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2017
posted by Chrysostom at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2017
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