“Like a demon from station to station”
An intrepid couple momentarily break off from their quest to visit all 2,563 national rail stations in Great Britain, to tell PAUL STEPHEN what inspired them to take on such an ambitious and madcap challenge
Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe cannot claim to be the only people to have visited every British railway station, but they could well be the fastest to complete this impressive endeavour.
Twelve months ago, RAIL turned the spotlight on David Brewer, whose mission to photograph each of Britain’s 2,563 stations culminated in the publication of his book
Britain’s Least Used Stations ( RAIL 807). Fortunately for Brewer, he had time on his side. He ticked off the final station on his list more than nine years since visiting the first, making the speed of his accomplishment appear positively laidback compared with the whirlwind pace of Geoff’s and Vicki’s attempt.
In a project that the duo have fittingly dubbed All The Stations, they reached their journey’s end at Wick on August 19, barely 100 days since embarking from Penzance on May 7. RAIL caught up with them during a quick change of train at Chester-le Street while bound for Middlesbrough on July 31, at which point they had already notched up 85% of the total number of stations on their belt… but still with 405 left to go.
Documenting their progress daily via social media, Vicki says that they had just one simple and self-imposed rule to follow in order to complete the challenge: although they need not physically detrain at each location, both would have to be on board a train while it called there for it to count as a bona fide visit. Through trains would therefore be deemed an illegal (although admittedly tempting) tactic to try and speed up the process.
Geoff, a video producer, and Vicki, an education professional at London Transport Museum, have also been gathering footage for a documentary that will eventually be made available on YouTube. It will feature the many staff, passengers and communities they encountered, while any relevant material will also be donated to the National Railway Museum and London Transport Museum for posterity, providing an enduring snapshot of the network in 2017 as a vivid resource for future generations.
They hope that the sheer novelty and adventurous spirit of the project will act as a celebration of Britain’s railways. And with a little help from the ample media coverage it has generated, it will encourage more people to use the train - or at least look more favourably upon them.
It is for this reason that the project has attracted the endorsement and sponsorship of the Rail Delivery Group, while earlier this year a crowdfunding campaign raised almost
£40,000 in less than a month to help cover the expenses incurred by the pair from being away from home for such a long period of time, as well as the cost of professional filming and editing.
“The logistics have probably been one of the hardest aspects of the project,” Vicki tells RAIL.
“We started to plan this at the end of last year, and haven’t really stopped since. Starting in southwest England and finishing in the north of Scotland was really only our starting point of which route we should take. We made a list of awkward stations which we knew didn’t have a very frequent service to plan in the calendar, and then built the rest of the schedule around that.
“We also have a small team of people in the background at what we call ‘mission control’, to help with the route itself or if we have any unforeseen problems such as if a train is cancelled - because, as you can imagine, it’s an ever-changing picture.
“We also built in some rest days inside the schedule, which have increased the further we’ve gone as we rapidly realised just how exhausting this is.”
The pair had previously calculated that visiting all the stations could be done in about 50 days, if they devoted every waking hour to travelling from one end of the country to the other on consecutive days. They now estimate
People often talk about constant delays in the news, but this just goes to show how brilliant the network really is. Vicki Pipe, All The Stations railway traveller
that their less punishing schedule will mean 60-70 days of actual travel, with 30 days of rest built in between.
Fortunately for them, Vicki also reports that around 99% of their journeys have gone to plan so far, with no incidents that have threatened to overly disrupt their carefully planned schedule.
She concedes that special arrangements have sometimes had to be made for a select group of little-used stations, such as Pilning, Polesworth, Bordesley, Ardwick and Teesside Airport. Some are served by just one train a week, and onward road transport has to be provided should they decide to detrain and gather any footage.
Vicki adds: “We had some signal failures near Worcester during some very hot weather in June, which forced us to turn around one day. But, touch wood, we’ve never been stranded anywhere and been left with no alternatives. People often talk about constant delays in the news, but this just goes to show how brilliant the network really is.
“It’s very exciting when we visit one of our ‘awkward’ stations, although they’re usually quite difficult to fit in. We are normally based in London, where there are always 20-30 people waiting on a platform, so to be completely on your own at Shippea Hill or somewhere very rural like that is a really special feeling.”
Despite the length of time the couple have spent in each other’s company in the close confines of a train carriage for the past two months, Vicki says they continue to get on well and have suffered no major disagreements.
One difference that can be detected, however, is in their individual views on the best and worst stations they have visited so far. While Geoff favours the scenic but isolated Coombe Junction Halt on the Looe Valley Line, Vicki prefers the more modestly sized stations of Westhoughton (near Bolton) and Market Rasen (Lincolnshire), where community involvement is heavily evident through the artwork supplied by local schools and gardens tended by volunteers.
As for their least favourite station, Geoff says: “When you’re inside Leeds station, it doesn’t have the splendour of nearby York or Darlington with their impressive roofs, so for such a major interchange it was quite uninspiring.”
With the pair now on the home straight and down to the final 15% of Britain’s stations remaining to be visited, what is the next challenge for the pair (especially Geoff, who prior to All The Stations had twice held the world record for visiting all London Underground stations in the shortest time possible)?
He replies that they may look to visit all stations in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. And it is difficult to foresee an end to their current quest when new stations continue to be opened - for instance, the five proposed new stations awarded funding by the Department for Transport under its New Stations Fund on July 28 ( RAIL 833).
Geoff concludes: “When those stations open, we’ll be yearning to go. Have we inadvertently set ourselves up to visit every new station that opens for the rest of our lives? Quite possibly.”
Turn over to pages 92-95 for a special look at one of Britain’s quirkiest stations.
(*David Bowie 1976)