National Rail Stations (all of them)

[tubeguru]

(Those of you who are my Facebook friends may already know about this self-indulgent rubbish, so just go with it, alright?)

The recent thread on the Birmingham rail challenge reminded me to post this.

Shortly after I met my wife to be in 2006 we started going places on the train, sometimes to visit a particular place, and other times just for the hell of it.

Since then we have covered quite a few National Rail stations, and the decision was made somewhere on a train journey that we should make it our mission to visit them all. That's all 2518 in the UK, as listed in the Network Rail station usage figures 2008-09. I'm sure the figure may change by the time we get anywhere near 2000 stations.

Of course, we don't intend to actually "visit" every station; that would take more time than I'll ever have. Therefore, we have defined a "visit" as either arriving at, departing from, or simply passing through a station. So, a trip from King's Cross to Alexandra Palace would net us five stations (KC, Finsbury Park, Hornsey, Harringay and Alexandra Palace).

To date we've managed 715 stations of 2518. That's 28.4%. Lots of work still to do, and we only count the ones we've done together. I could add quite a few more that I've done on my own, but that would be cheating.

I've got a Google map of the stations visited thus far, although everyone keeps telling me they can't get it to work. I'll post the link here and let you tell me if it works or not:

http://tinyurl.com/6yal9zf

Does it work?

[tubeguru]

The wife just tested the link and it's playing up. Sometimes the pins are displayed and other times they aren't!

[Starkey7]

That's quite a task. The map looks great - very Londoncentric!

[tubeguru]

Well we have lived in or near London since 2006, so most journeys start from that area.

Sometimes the map displays in paged format, with four pages of stations, and sometimes it loads them all on one map. Very strange.

You'll notice the huge area missing from the eastern/northern area of the map - we'll be addressing that this year.

[tangy]

I have my own version of this, been doing it for a few years now, the aim to visit every rail station (Tube, NR, Metro etc.) in the UK. However to me a "visit" is to physically get on or off the train at that station rather than just stop there. No matter if a frequently served station or not, the same criteria apply.

My current total is around 1,200 (not updated my records recently to reflect new ones visited) this includes every SWT served station and all bar a few FGW ones.

[tubeguru]

Whichever version one does, it's still a lot of ground to cover.

[RichieG]

The tricky ones will be those only open at certain times, such as on 'match days' etc...

This might interest you (at least from the techie side of things) - at some point (probably not until the easter holidays as that's the next time I've got off work) I'm hoping to look see if the OpenStreetMap data is available in API form or something, so that I can grab the mapping data, and add my own to indicate roads driven and railways travelled on. If it works, I'll let you have access to it somehow (I think it'd be useful for a load of other geeks that I believe some people here know about too) so you can use it. Hopefully it'd be a bit more reliable than Google Maps is for things like this (as GM is really only for showing maps with occasional landmarks, not custom routes and many landmarks...)

[tubeguru]

Excellent - I've been looking for a decent alternative to GM, but nothing have come up yet. Match-day stations will be ticked off as appropriate. Is Old Trafford one of those?

[Sam]

Yes it certainly is only open on match days. Northern Rail serve it.

[jamesthegill]

How the chuff is Strood (North Kent) a dead end? Did you get off and walk, or have you missed out the North Kent line through Higham and Gravesend, or the Medway Valley line to Maidstone?

[tubeguru]

The map is paged. There are four pages of pins as Google Maps by default does not show all pins.

Scroll down the list on the left and you will find the links to the other pages ... the map cut off the route at Strood.

[al]

Good luck to you Neil (and Lorna). When I worked on the railway I visited every station on the network at the time based on your definition, with the exception of 'special' stations, like Old Trafford, and to my regret Sinfin North and Sinfin Central (and Croxley Green). I could never get to Derby for 0700 in the morning for the replacement taxi, and although I tried to find Sinfin Central station on foot, the footpath and been obstructed by building work and no diversion set up so that was a no go as well.

Sadly a few new lines have opened since then (curse the Scottish Government! ) so I have a bit of catching up to do.

[tubeguru]

Re-opening stations - I have to keep an eye on those, as it's easy to miss one that opens on a line you've already been over.

Every time a new rail atlas comes out I have to compare it with the most recent edition and the NR station list to see if anything new's popped up.

[tubeguru]

Could someone try this URL for me and tell me what you see?

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... F8&t=h&z=5

I can't test it myself because I need someone who isn't logged in as me to do it!

[Sam]

A map with loads of blue pins in it and just one long list rather than 4 pages!