Trivia> Trivia!!

[superalbs]

I believe the last line of your post is correct!

Denton and Reddish South would be examples of a perfectly regular, but very infrequent service.

Stourbridge Town to Stourbridge Junction is every 10 minutes, making it regular and frequent!

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Stourbridge Town to Stourbridge Junction is every 10 minutes, making it regular and frequent!

But not a perfect round the clock frequency!
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What kind of platform shelters did Hellifield have at the time?

Don't recall any. I think the café was open once but not every time.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Don't recall any. I think the café was open once but not every time.

Fair do's!

 

[Darren R]

Church & Oswaldtwistle sees 25% more trains on a Sunday than on a weekday.

Nah, its Hellifield. Spent a few hours there in early 2000s during WC diverts - lost all feeling in my jaw in a couple of hours, couldn't talk for about an hour after getting back in the car.

In Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway days Hellifield had the reputation of being the windiest station on its network.

 

[RichmondCommu]

How many stations have snow huts located next to them? My contribution is therefore Dent!

 

[marks87]

According to wikipedia Dundee is as well.

It is, but is also only 200 yards or so from the Firth of Tay making it all the more remarkable.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Leeds (City+Wellington) and Wrexham General (General+Exchange) are stations that started out as two separate stations before being merged... But are there any others?

 

[HowardGWR]

Leeds (City+Wellington) and Wrexham General (General+Exchange) are stations that started out as two separate stations before being merged... But are there any others?

Bristol Temple Meads (GWR / B and E)

 

[thenorthern]

Talking of Bristol Temple Meads, it is the only Network Rail managed station that isn't electrified (I think).

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Coleshill Parkway, the only station in Warwickshire (I think) not served by London Midland.

Nearby Water Orton is another. It's just in Warwickshire, the station building is maybe 500 yards from the city limits of Birmingham and the metropolitan West Midlands.

 

[EM2]

Leeds (City+Wellington) and Wrexham General (General+Exchange) are stations that started out as two separate stations before being merged... But are there any others?

London Victoria.

 

[tsr]

Leeds (City+Wellington) and Wrexham General (General+Exchange) are stations that started out as two separate stations before being merged... But are there any others?

Redhill.

 

[martinsh]

Heysham Port and Stourbridge Town - the only two stations from which you can only travel to one other station without reversing.

 

[thenorthern]

Its still the United Kingdom so Newry the only station in the United Kingdom that is served by a foreign operator. (Eurostar and Enterprise are joint operations that include a UK partner) while Iarnród Éireann is foreign.

I think I read Tamworth Station is the furthest station from the coast.

 

[HowardGWR]

OK here's a challenge. The LSWR goes in and out again of the county of Dorset four times between Axminster (Devon) and Semley (Wilts). Is there any line that does such as that more?

 

[Railsigns]

Heysham Port and Stourbridge Town - the only two stations from which you can only travel to one other station without reversing.

+ Marlow.

 

[Howardh]

Nuneaton is the closest station to the official centre of England (according to Wikipedia....)

 

[6Gman]

No. There are probably quite a few of those. Crookston and Hawkhead are another two.

Llanfair PG?
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Leeds (City+Wellington) and Wrexham General (General+Exchange) are stations that started out as two separate stations before being merged... But are there any others?

Preston? (NU & EL?)

Cardiff Central?? - were there platforms on the south side with a different name?

 

[D6975]

Waverley's platforms are numbered in a clockwise direction, starting at the north. If there's a more straightforward numbering system, I can't think what it is.

What????

You call a system that has platforms 1 and 20 as two halves of the same platform straightforward???

 

[Clip]

What????

You call a system that has platforms 1 and 20 as two halves of the same platform straightforward???

is that any different than splitting a platform between a/b? In fact you could say that by numbering it totally different shows a clear intent that they are two different platforms. Problems I used to hear at the cross was which part is and which b- seemed to confuse the not so average passenger a lot.

 

[Haywain]

How about stations without a platform 1, or 2, or 3? Bridlington's lowest numbered platform is 4 - does any other station match or beat this? Obviously excluding those stations where the platforms are known by letters instead.

 

[TheNewNo2]

Further from any other open station by rail.

Actually it's not that bad, about 14 miles, just a long way for such a major town and a major part of the railway, I find it surprising. CORE isn't working anymore, but from some ramblings a decade ago, Hereford and Swindon down south are beaten by Okehampton, by Berwick upon Tweed wins in England and Stranraer in Scotland.

The following is a list (in decimal miles) of each station's minimum distance to another station (only showing those >10mi):

Station 1 MinOfDistance
Lockerbie 25.8
Stranraer 25.6875
Berwick-upon-Tweed 20.96
Malton 18.025
Penrith 17.86
Spalding 16.6
Perth 15.525
Dumfries 15.4875
Market Rasen 14.54
Diss 14.41
Tiverton Parkway 14.21
Wick 14.1875
Welshpool 13.85
Swindon 13.7
Dunkeld & Birnam 12.875
Hereford 12.5875
Keith 12.475
Huntly 12.475
Gleneagles 12.2625
Barrhill 12.25
Girvan 12.25
Elgin 12.225
Stamford 12.09
Cam & Dursley 11.7
Taunton 11.55
Oakham 11.51
Dunbar 11.31
Chathill 11.18
Kemble 11.18
Leominster 10.9125
Market Harborough 10.91
Ivybridge 10.79
Appleby 10.6875
Insch 10.625
Inverurie 10.625
Bicester North 10.55
Melton Mowbray 10.26
Axminster 10.19
Dalwhinnie 10.1875
Gainsborough Central 10.13
Inverness 10.125
Laurencekirk 10.05
Montrose 10.05

Lockerbie to Kirknewton wins for longest single section at 64.55 miles; followed by Lockerbie to Cerstairs at 47.74. Swindon to Bristol Parkway is 5th at 34.49.

 

[rf_ioliver]

Redhill.

Reading ... wasn't that originally two stations?

t.

Ian

 

[thenorthern]

Tamworth Station I think was officially 2 separate stations until 1923 when the names "High Level" and "Low Level" came into use with grouping.

Uttoxeter was originally 3 separate stations until 1881.

 

[MarkyT]

CORE isn't working anymore, but from some ramblings a decade ago, Hereford and Swindon down south are beaten by Okehampton, by Berwick upon Tweed wins in England and Stranraer in Scotland.

CORE may be gone, but Realtime Trains has cumulative miles and chains listed in the individual train times now. However, frustratingly it is not for all trains and it's difficult to understand the rationale why some train list it whilst others don't. It's definitely not by operating company. Possibly the data tables from which the trip mileage is calculated are incomplete and if a train passes through a missing section anywhere en route there can be no display of mileage at all. It's very weird though. Some West country - Paddington expresses and vice versa give mileage, some don't, whether they're going via Bristol or B&H, but almost every single one of these through the day has a slightly different routeing or calling pattern. At first I thought mileage was only missing from trains that didn't call at Taunton but then I found one missing Taunton with mileage listed. Locals around Exeter and the LSWR route all seem to show mileage.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Cardiff Central?? - were there platforms on the south side with a different name?

I think that you're thinking of the Riverside platforms.

The services from there went down to a different part of Cardiff Bay to a station called Clarence Road. The line was closed (and most of it demolished) before I started travelling to Cardiff (in the mid 1970s) but the Riverside platforms were there for quite a while afterwards, as I think that they were used for storage.

Whether it was a totally different station to Central, though, I'm not sure.

I've just found this from another site: "Section 43A of 'Track Layouts and Diagrams of the Great Western Railway and BR (WR) by R A Cooke has a series of plans showing the layout changes on the branch over the years. It apparently closed on 16/03/1964 to passenger services, with the 'box closing 14/06/65. Some of the branch remained until 08/07/1969, whilst the platforms of the former Riverside station, next to Cardiff General, served as a parcels depot into the early 1990s, being lifted in early 1993."

 

[PHILIPE]

I think that you're thinking of the Riverside platforms.

The services from there went down to a different part of Cardiff Bay to a station called Clarence Road. The line was closed (and most of it demolished) before I started travelling to Cardiff (in the mid 1970s) but the Riverside platforms were there for quite a while afterwards, as I think that they were used for storage.

Whether it was a totally different station to Central, though, I'm not sure.

I've just found this from another site: "Section 43A of 'Track Layouts and Diagrams of the Great Western Railway and BR (WR) by R A Cooke has a series of plans showing the layout changes on the branch over the years. It apparently closed on 16/03/1964 to passenger services, with the 'box closing 14/06/65. Some of the branch remained until 08/07/1969, whilst the platforms of the former Riverside station, next to Cardiff General, served as a parcels depot into the early 1990s, being lifted in early 1993."

The former Riverside Platforms at Cardiff Central were used for stabling Parcels vehicles before closure and back in the days when Parcels trains ran.

 

[SeanG]

Where is the longest straight?
Is it between Selby & Hull or Skegness & Boston?

In reference to station operators above, Newcastle & York have both been operated by 5
GNER, NXEC, East Coast, VTEC & Network Rail

Manchester Victoria(another former 2 in 1 station) has been operated by 4
Northwestern Trains, First North Western, Northern & Netwrk Rail

 

[miami]

CORE may be gone, but Realtime Trains has cumulative miles and chains listed in the individual train times now. However, frustratingly it is not for all trains and it's difficult to understand the rationale why some train list it whilst others don't. It's definitely not by operating company. Possibly the data tables from which the trip mileage is calculated are incomplete and if a train passes through a missing section anywhere en route there can be no display of mileage at all. It's very weird though. Some West country - Paddington expresses and vice versa give mileage, some don't, whether they're going via Bristol or B&H, but almost every single one of these through the day has a slightly different routeing or calling pattern. At first I thought mileage was only missing from trains that didn't call at Taunton but then I found one missing Taunton with mileage listed. Locals around Exeter and the LSWR route all seem to show mileage.

Many years ago I stumbled over a text file that had all the routes in with distances between stations and junctions, in a machine readable format, which could be used to build a graph. I don't recall the number of vertices, but it was probably something like 3000 nodes.

It was then I discovered proof breadth-first searching algorithms didn't scale particularly well. I wish I could find the database again, would be nice to reimplement a parser and do some experiments.

 

[TheNewNo2]

Many years ago I stumbled over a text file that had all the routes in with distances between stations and junctions, in a machine readable format, which could be used to build a graph. I don't recall the number of vertices, but it was probably something like 3000 nodes.

It was then I discovered proof breadth-first searching algorithms didn't scale particularly well. I wish I could find the database again, would be nice to reimplement a parser and do some experiments.

I've built a database which contains the distances between all adjacent UK stations (although it's not complete for heritage lines), that combined with a journey list by station will give a distance calculated to a pretty good accuracy. Luckily there aren't many places where there are two routes between two adjacent stations which are more than one or two chains different.