Trivia: Most ridiculously named station in UK

DavidGrain · 19 Jul 2018

The problem with names that have compass points is that which came first, the local name for the area or the name given by the railways? Although now a tram stop rather than a station, West Bromwich has always been that and Bromwich West would be meaningless. East Grinstead is a similar case.

Canterbury East and West has already been mentioned although the stations are actually north and south of the centre.

This problem is not confined to the railways. For a time Hilton Park Service Area on the M6 was calling itself North Birmingham yet it is nowhere near Birmingham.

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transmanche · 19 Jul 2018

DavidGrain said:
The problem with names that have compass points is that which came first, the local name for the area or the name given by the railways?

I've always worked on the basis that [compass point]+[placename] usually indicates a separate place/settlement of that name; e.g. North/South/West Harrow. Whereas [placename]+[compass point] indicates areas within the same place/settlement, or just to distinguish two stations in the same place/settlement; e.g. Canterbury East/West or Cambridge North.

Of course, it's not an absolute rule. It can often be difficult to distinguish between places/settlements. And sometimes the name of the station led to the naming of the local place/settlement.

Mikey C · 19 Jul 2018

transmanche said:
I've always worked on the basis that [compass point]+[placename] usually indicates a separate place/settlement of that name; e.g. North/South/West Harrow. Whereas [placename]+[compass point] indicates areas within the same place/settlement, or just to distinguish two stations in the same place/settlement; e.g. Canterbury East/West or Cambridge North.

Of course, it's not an absolute rule. It can often be difficult to distinguish between places/settlements. And sometimes the name of the station led to the naming of the local place/settlement.

The Finchley stations manage to use both these conventions! Coming out of London you reach - East Finchley - Finchley Central - West Finchley

It can be argued that East Finchley is indeed a separate place, whereas the other 2 are really part of Finchley "proper". West Finchley should perhaps be Finchley North, except that would confuse people wanting to go to North Finchley which IS a distinct location and bus terminus!

30907 · 19 Jul 2018

61653 HTAFC said:
Agree with this, it always struck me as odd that the compass point comes first with the Croydon stations, especially as East and West are actually more central to Croydon town than many stations that only bear the names of the settlements they serve.

While the other long-closed Croydon station was Croydon Central.
I suppose though that South Croydon is a separate district these days....

61653 HTAFC · 19 Jul 2018

transmanche said:
I've always worked on the basis that [compass point]+[placename] usually indicates a separate place/settlement of that name; e.g. North/South/West Harrow. Whereas [placename]+[compass point] indicates areas within the same place/settlement, or just to distinguish two stations in the same place/settlement; e.g. Canterbury East/West or Cambridge North.

Of course, it's not an absolute rule. It can often be difficult to distinguish between places/settlements. And sometimes the name of the station led to the naming of the local place/settlement.

That would be my interpretation of the convention too, though as you say there are notable exceptions as well as sensible reasons that stations may switch the order: the Tyndrum stations being an example of that. There's also stations and settlements that have apparently redundant modifiers: Clayton West, though no longer on the national network, is not a station to the West of a village called Clayton and there was never a Clayton East. There isn't even a village of that name in the area, nor is there a plain old Clayton. The reason the village has "West" on the end is (as far as I can garner from my mother who was born there) lost to the mists of time.

Back to ridiculous names, on another thread there was discussion of Yatton for Clevedon: a station that isn't particularly close to either settlement. In the same area, I'm not keen on Worle because it (a) just sounds and looks odd, and (b) breaks up a run of stations with 2 words or more that would stretch from (exclusively) Bridgwater to Bedminster.

PR1Berske · 19 Jul 2018

For the purposes of parliamentary constituency naming, borough (or urban) seats get the compass point at the end (Glasgow East, Leicester South), while countr (or rural) seats have them at the front (North West Cambridgeshire).

hussra · 19 Jul 2018

DavidGrain said:
University station is in Edgbaston not Harborne. Five Ways is also in Edgbaston and the current plan to extend the West Midlands Metro to Five Ways is calling the stop Edgbaston. Oh and by the way the Five Ways junction has six roads although realinement when the roundabout was built in the late 1960s does slightly obscure this fact. (Calthorpe Road was a later addition to the other five).

Many of the passengers using University Station are actually going to/from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital which has its own campus adjacent to the University campus.

This is very true. University is of course one of three stations in the UK with that name...

transmanche · 19 Jul 2018

Mikey C said:
The Finchley stations manage to use both these conventions! Coming out of London you reach - East Finchley - Finchley Central - West Finchley

It can be argued that East Finchley is indeed a separate place, whereas the other 2 are really part of Finchley "proper". West Finchley should perhaps be Finchley North, except that would confuse people wanting to go to North Finchley which IS a distinct location and bus terminus!

Not forgetting that Finchley Central has had a number of different names over the years: originally Finchley & Hendon, then Finchley, Finchley Church End before finally becoming Finchley Central when LT took it over in 1940.

xotGD · 19 Jul 2018

A couple of suburban stations called Northampton South and Southampton North would be nice.

jessica33 · 19 Jul 2018

Mutant Lemming said:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Bless you

Andyjs247 · 20 Jul 2018

Chester Road. Despite being on the Chester Road the station is a long, long way from Chester.

transmanche · 20 Jul 2018

Andyjs247 said:
Chester Road. Despite being on the Chester Road the station is a long, long way from Chester.

Oh, if we're going down that route, then Turkey Street. Despite being on Turkey Street, the station is a long, long way from Turkey...

Springs Branch · 20 Jul 2018

Andyjs247 said:
Chester Road. Despite being on the Chester Road the station is a long, long way from Chester.

On Merseyside, Rice Lane station was known for most of its life as "Preston Road".
The station is indeed located on the main A59 road towards Preston, but the road had always been called Rice Lane in this locality. The station was sensibly re-named in the 1970s or 80s.

LU's Preston Road station on the Metropolitan line is a long way from Preston (Lancs), but at least it's on a thoroughfare actually called Preston Road.

trash80 · 20 Jul 2018

Andyjs247 said:
Chester Road. Despite being on the Chester Road the station is a long, long way from Chester.

There is a valid reason to rename it if needed, Chester Road is in Wylde Green unlike the actual Wylde Green station which is really in Boldmere.

backontrack · 20 Jul 2018

Adlington said:
Valley is a village near Holyhead. Recent research suggested that Valley may be a corruption of the Irish Bally (settlement), or Baile.
Source: Wikipedia

That would appear to be the best explanation.

A similar place is Tain. The pretty town in Easter Ross has a single-syllable name, shared with the River Tain - but, in Gaelic, the name of the town is 'Baile Dhubhthaich' - the town of St Duthac, locally spelled as St Duthus. Duthus was the patron saint of Tain, and the football team is still called St Duthus FC. But nobody knows where the name 'Tain' originates from.

At the station, you'll see both names on the signage. Baile Dhubhthaich is pronounced 'bella-hooey'.

Lucan · 20 Jul 2018

Andyjs247 said:
Chester Road. Despite being on the Chester Road the station is a long, long way from Chester.

But isn't that a long-standing railway convention? It means that rather than being at place Xyz, the station is on a road that leads to Xyz. Quite common when a station were built on a main line to serve a nearby village that it was not worth putting a kink in the line to reach more closely. In some cases it was because the local land owner or parish chairman objected to the railway being closer, and in some cases major towns were down the road, as with Bodmin Road station.

billio · 20 Jul 2018

As a schoolboy I thought it would be more amusing for there to have been Fairlie High and Fairlie Low stations.

Andyjs247 · 21 Jul 2018

Lucan said:
But isn't that a long-standing railway convention? It means that rather than being at place Xyz, the station is on a road that leads to Xyz. Quite common when a station were built on a main line to serve a nearby village that it was not worth putting a kink in the line to reach more closely. In some cases it was because the local land owner or parish chairman objected to the railway being closer, and in some cases major towns were down the road, as with Bodmin Road station.

However in this case the Chester Road doesn’t actually go to Chester. It cuts across a swathe of north Birmingham taking you as far as Brownhills

Edinburgh2000 · 21 Jul 2018

billio said:
As a schoolboy I thought it would be more amusing for there to have been Fairlie High and Fairlie Low stations.

Or Alloa High and the other one which would be a reminder of a 1980s sitcom.

Edinburgh2000 · 21 Jul 2018

61653 HTAFC said:
Clayton West, though no longer on the national network, is not a station to the West of a village called Clayton and there was never a Clayton East. There isn't even a village of that name in the area, nor is there a plain old Clayton. The reason the village has "West" on the end is (as far as I can garner from my mother who was born there) lost to the mists of time.

Forgive me, a non-Yorkshire man, interfering, but isn't this because there are two Claytons in (old) Yorkshire and the name was to clarify that this one was in the West Riding, just like we would write "Richmond (Yorks)" nowadays, they would have written "Clayton (West)" to differentiate it from the one in the South Riding: Clayton (South).

DavidGrain · 21 Jul 2018

Andyjs247 said:
However in this case the Chester Road doesn’t actually go to Chester. It cuts across a swathe of north Birmingham taking you as far as Brownhills

Actually Chester Road Birmingham does go to Chester, in fact locally I think it is usually referred to as The Chester Road. It eventually joins up with the A41.
Interestingly for reasons I did not understand, if you wanted to get a Crosville coach to Liverpool from Birmingham back in the 1960s you had to go out to the Chester Road as they did not run through Digbeth Coach Station.

snowball · 21 Jul 2018

Edinburgh2000 said:
Forgive me, a non-Yorkshire man, interfering, but isn't this because there are two Claytons in (old) Yorkshire and the name was to clarify that this one was in the West Riding, just like we would write "Richmond (Yorks)" nowadays, they would have written "Clayton (West)" to differentiate it from the one in the South Riding: Clayton (South).

Except that Doncaster was also in the West Riding. There wasn't a South Riding except in the novel of that name. South Yorkshire as a local government area was introduced in 1974.

(I'm not a Yorkshireman either, I merely live here.)

InterCity:125 · 21 Jul 2018

Any of the stupid sounding English villages would do

61653 HTAFC · 21 Jul 2018

Edinburgh2000 said:
Forgive me, a non-Yorkshire man, interfering, but isn't this because there are two Claytons in (old) Yorkshire and the name was to clarify that this one was in the West Riding, just like we would write "Richmond (Yorks)" nowadays, they would have written "Clayton (West)" to differentiate it from the one in the South Riding: Clayton (South).

No, because Clayton West is the name of the village which the station serves. It isn't the station that has a ridiculous name, but the village itself.

sprunt · 23 Jul 2018

Veering outside the UK again, the Stuttgart Rack Railway has 8 stations, one of which is called Zahnradbahnhof, which translates to, erm, "Rack Railway station". Helpful!

Dave49 · 23 Jul 2018

Leeds Wellington Station nothing to do with Wellington boots but Duke of Wellington.

30907 · 23 Jul 2018

sprunt said:
Veering outside the UK again, the Stuttgart Rack Railway has 8 stations, one of which is called Zahnradbahnhof, which translates to, erm, "Rack Railway station". Helpful!

Formerly Degerloch Zahnradbahnhof - the line was extended to a new interchange with the U-bahn at Degerloch some years ago, but the old terminus wasn't closed.

rg177 · 23 Jul 2018

I'd probably elect Poó station, on the line between Santander-Llanes-Oviedo. Unfortunately on that day it was bustituted from Llanes so no snap of the station sign!

37 418 · 23 Jul 2018

backontrack said:
That would appear to be the best explanation.

A similar place is Tain. The pretty town in Easter Ross has a single-syllable name, shared with the River Tain - but, in Gaelic, the name of the town is 'Baile Dhubhthaich' - the town of St Duthac, locally spelled as St Duthus. Duthus was the patron saint of Tain, and the football team is still called St Duthus FC. But nobody knows where the name 'Tain' originates from.

At the station, you'll see both names on the signage. Baile Dhubhthaich is pronounced 'bella-hooey'.

Baile Dhubhthaich is actually pronounced Ball-uh GHOO-eech, the 'gh' being like the Dutch 'g' or similar to French r; the 'ch' as in German Ich.

Calthrop · 23 Jul 2018

rg177 said:
I'd probably elect Poó station, on the line between Santander-Llanes-Oviedo. Unfortunately on that day it was bustituted from Llanes so no snap of the station sign!

If we're "going foreign": the Szerencs -- Hidasnemeti branch line in Hungary -- running through pleasantly hilly country by Hungarian standards -- has intermediate stations called Mad; Gonc; and Golop. (I can't, here, do foreign accents on letters.)

Trivia: Most ridiculously named station in UK

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