• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Your favourite evocatively-named stations (both past and present)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

RichJF

RichJF

Member
Joined
2 Nov 2012
Messages
1,100
Location
Sussex
I'm a Southerner so I'll keep it in my region. Chosen because they create an image in my head when they're mentioned:
Clock House
Bat & Ball
Winchelsea
Three Oaks
Cowden
 
C

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,305
On theme of -- admirable -- "love of one's own patch": eastern England / East Midlands in my case -- from the latter thereof...

On the IMO utterly delectable, long defunct, LNW / GN joint-cum-purely-GN system in east Leicestershire: three successive-along-the-line double-named stations, redolent to me of local joys:

Long Clawson & Hose

Harby & Stathern

Redmile & Belvoir (often called just Redmile, but the alternative appears in places, including on early-20th-century Ordnance Survey maps)


and on the LNWR branch to Loughborough (Derby Road) -- offshoot of the LNW / Midland joint Market Bosworth system, passenger services throughout withdrawn 1931:

Grace Dieu Halt

Snell's Nook Halt
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

Veteran Member
Joined
7 Jun 2014
Messages
14,078
ag51ruk said:
Eltham Well Hall had a slightly exotic ring to it.

If we included non-UK stations, Emu Plains in West Sydney is a nice enough place but more suburban than the name suggests!
Click to expand...

As an Elthamian I can also reveal that E.M. Nesbit, author of 'The Railway Chidren', lived as a child in a house situated just north of the station, before you get to Well Hall Pleasaunce. Every local schoolkid was informed of this.
 
B

Bedpan

Established Member
Joined
4 Feb 2010
Messages
1,287
Location
Harpenden
Scouseinmanc said:
French Drove & Gedney Hill
Bovey Tracey
Banchory
Mary Tavy & Blackdown
Glasgow St Enoch
Waddeston Manor
Click to expand...

Purely out of interest, where is Waddeston Manor? I Googled it couldn't didn't get a result. My interest was sparked as there is a Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury which I drive past fairly regularly, it is a national Trust property in the village of Waddesdon, Bucks. There used to be two stations nearby, Waddesdon on the Metropolitan and Great Central Railway, which served the village, and also Waddesdon Road, which was on the Brill Tramway and which was situated at the opposite end of the Waddesdon Manor Estate. There was never a Waddesdon Manor station though, as far as I know.
 
C

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,305
Bedpan said:
Purely out of interest, where is Waddeston Manor? I Googled it couldn't didn't get a result. My interest was sparked as there is a Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury which I drive past fairly regularly, it is a national Trust property in the village of Waddesdon, Bucks. There used to be two stations nearby, Waddesdon on the Metropolitan and Great Central Railway, which served the village, and also Waddesdon Road, which was on the Brill Tramway and which was situated at the opposite end of the Waddesdon Manor Estate. There was never a Waddesdon Manor station though, as far as I know.
Click to expand...

I'm not Scouseinmanc; but my understanding is that the station concerned, is that whose description above, I have bolded: on the Metropolitan & Great Central Joint route, between Aylesbury and Quainton Road -- closed to passengers in 1966, with the section of the GC between Aylesbury and Rugby. From its opening in 1897 until 1922, its name was Waddesdon Manor; after which name was, until closure, just Wadddesdon.
 
Q

quarella

Member
Joined
7 Dec 2009
Messages
815
Edington Burtle. I used to live in Somerset and knew the station name but it was only in the past year I discovered Edington and Burtle were 2 separate places with the station between them.
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

Veteran Member
Joined
7 Jun 2014
Messages
14,078
quarella said:
Edington Burtle. I used to live in Somerset and knew the station name but it was only in the past year I discovered Edington and Burtle were 2 separate places with the station between them.
Click to expand...
Never heard of that one: I wonder if the writer of the old song 'Burlington Bertie' had consciously or unconsciously come across it.
 
C

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,305
quarella said:
Edington Burtle. I used to live in Somerset and knew the station name but it was only in the past year I discovered Edington and Burtle were 2 separate places with the station between them.
Click to expand...

I always think of this station by its alternative name of Edington Junction -- it being the point where the S & D's Evercreech Jun. -- Burnham-on-Sea line, and Bridgwater branch, diverged -- I reckon, because it was called by the "Junction" version in O.S. Nock's book Branch Lines, where I first heard of the place. (The Ian Allan Pre-Grouping Atlas & Gazetteer, and Jowett's Railway Atlas, also go with the "Junction" appellation.)
 
VioletEclipse

VioletEclipse

Member
Joined
10 Nov 2018
Messages
716
Location
Dùn Èideann
Bletchleyite said:
Video about how to pronounce it, and nice things in the local area:

Note that almost nothing in the village itself appears, this should say as much as you need to know about it :)
Click to expand...
Haha lol, thanks :). I have watched that video so many times! probably at least 30 times, but I still can't pronounce it properly :) Still I would like to go there and see it some day.
 
Lucan

Lucan

Established Member
Joined
21 Feb 2018
Messages
1,211
Location
Wales
Gamlingay, on the now closed Bedford-Cambridge line.
I used to mis-read it, not deliberately, as "Gamblingay". Sounded a bit decadent.
 
Lucan

Lucan

Established Member
Joined
21 Feb 2018
Messages
1,211
Location
Wales
pitdiver said:
... "Bat and Ball". Does seem a strange name for a station though.
Click to expand...
I guess it was named after a pub. Quite a few stations are (or seem to be) : Angel, Craven Arms, Elephant and Castle. Perhaps that should be a separate thread.
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

Veteran Member
Joined
7 Jun 2014
Messages
14,078
Lucan said:
I guess it was named after a pub. Quite a few stations are (or seem to be) : Angel, Craven Arms, Elephant and Castle. Perhaps that should be a separate thread.
Click to expand...
It was, apparently: not to be confused with the Bat and Ball cricket ground in Gravesend that still exists, but no longer played on by Kent County Cricket Club.
 
pitdiver

pitdiver

Member
Joined
22 Jan 2012
Messages
1,076
Location
Nottinghamshire
On the other hand which station name is the biggest tun off. EG sounds grim or grotty or whatever term you want to use The one that first came to mind is Necropolis. Which is now closed.
 
W

wellhouse

Member
Joined
4 Oct 2009
Messages
544
Location
West Yorkshire
Partridge Green
Littlehaven Halt
Dover Western Docks

and before Parkways became a thing, all the GWR ''Road' stations such as;

Bodmin Road
 
I

IceAgeComing

Member
Joined
31 Jul 2018
Messages
74
not quite as god as most in this thread but on the DLR I'm a fan of Cutty Sark (for Maritime Greenwich) just because there's something I like about naming a station after a boat.
 
hexagon789

hexagon789

Veteran Member
Joined
2 Sep 2016
Messages
15,775
Location
Glasgow
Strathclyder said:
Have holidayed in the latter of these two in 2017 and 2018; picturesque to a tee. Am headed up to Portsoy this year, really looking forward to it. One can only imagine how picturesque the line was when it was open.
Click to expand...

Banffshire and the Morayshire are both very underrated scenic areas I think.
 
Highlandspring

Highlandspring

Established Member
Joined
14 Oct 2017
Messages
2,777
The whole east and north coast of Scotland is overlooked by tourism. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
 
C

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,305
There's the long-standing thing by which -- prejudice taking something of a hand -- many people have long tended to assume that the eastern side of our largest island is flat and scenically dull, compared to its western side; and have thus preferred visiting the western side in their leisure time. The pre-1948 London & North Eastern Railway felt, in this "scenery" connection, something of a sense of inferiority vis-a-vis the LMS and GW (in my perception, a bit unnecessarily: the LNER had some superb scenery in its ex-North Eastern and North British reaches): LNER tried to make the best of the perceived "bad job", by marketing itself as serving the "drier" -- even if more boring -- side of Great Britain. The Great North of Scotland Railway's system went to the LNER at Grouping...
 
Strathclyder

Strathclyder

Established Member
Joined
12 Jun 2013
Messages
3,218
Location
Clydebank
Highlandspring said:
The whole east and north coast of Scotland is overlooked by tourism. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Click to expand...

hexagon789 said:
That's very true, gives it a more idyllic, unspoiled quality.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with both of you. My mother has fallen in love with the region after holidaying there two years on the trot. Have to say, I've fallen under it's spell too. The West Highlands will always wow me with it's sheer, almost in-your-face beauty, but the North-East Coast has won me over with it's idyllic, unspoiled charm.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top