Trivia: Best connected village station?

[Sleepy]

Althorne Essex, 2 trains per hour including direct trains to Liverpool St. in the peaks ?

 

[tsr]

Barnham must be a contender, what with trains to London, Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton, as well as many local towns, Gatwick Airport, and a chunk of the FGW network.

 

[nicobobinus]

An LU entry which I will dubiously slide in on the basis that it was a GER station a squillion years ago... Theydon Bois gets up to 10tph on the Central Line, although the range of destinations isn't extensive.

 

[william]

Sherbert in Helmet must be up there.

If you count South Milford station, it has links with Leeds, York, Hull, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester and Huddersfield .

 

[fairysdad]

My favourite village station has trains to Scotland, The North East, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Derby, Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth as well as Reading and London.

Unfortunately the station has never actually been called Sampford Peverell - rather Tiverton Rd, Junction and now Parkway, but it is only a 10min walk from the village pub

Actually, Tiverton Rd / Jcn were down the line at Willand; Tiverton Parkway is on the site of what was formerly a Sampford Peverell station.

 

[Taunton]

Bidston, Merseyside. Middle of nowhere but electric trains every 15 minutes on Liverpool-West Kirby line, plus diesels hourly on the Wrexham line.

 

[Julian Hornby]

It's actually very well connected!

 

[fowler9]

Bidston, Merseyside. Middle of nowhere but electric trains every 15 minutes on Liverpool-West Kirby line, plus diesels hourly on the Wrexham line.

I don't know,the station is a bit isolated but Bidston itself isn't really a village I think, unless Garston is aswell.

 

[jimm]

Hanborough is connected to 3 cities and has an almost hourly service to London & Worcester using HST (253 & 180) stock in the main.

Make that four - London, Oxford, Worcester and Hereford.

 

[Andyjs247]

Twyford - apart from the regular services to Paddington, Reading, Oxford and Henley there are 1 or 2 peak hour services to/from Banbury, Newbury/Frome, Cheltenham which also stop.

 

[Philip]

Wrenbury, Prees and especially Yorton on the Crewe to Shrewsbury line don't do too bad; bi-hourly local service during the day with a couple of early morning and evening services going straight to South Wales from Manchester and vice versa. Nearby Market Drayton (which is a town not a village) doesn't even have a railway anymore..

 

[thenorthern]

Long Buckby is quite well served with half-hourly to Birmingham and Hourly to London.

 

[scotsman]

Lockerbie: crap frequency, but direct services to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Carlisle, Lancaster, Preston, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Rugby, and London.

 

[thenorthern]

Lockerbie: crap frequency, but direct services to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Carlisle, Lancaster, Preston, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Rugby, and London.

I don't think Lockerbie is a village.

 

[merlodlliw]

Most locals consider Gowerton on the edge of the peninsula, not within it!

In fact, it would probably have been considered a town a few decades ago, as it had its own Magistrates Courts, market and a variety of shops and industries.

The problem with these sor tof threads is that there is no real consistent definition of what is a village and what is town or city.

I based Gowerton being a village,due to it having a Community Council,indeed locals will always know their patch best.

 

[Mark_re]

Alnmouth? Regular services up and down the ECML. The village of Alnmouth is small, but the station itself is in Hipsburn, which is about a mile away and even smaller.

 

[Greenback]

I based Gowerton being a village,due to it having a Community Council, indeed locals will always know their patch best.

You're right, it's definitely more of a village now. I wonder if it ever had a town council, though, as it had all the attributes of a town during the peak years of the industrial era.

It was regarded as the 'town of Gower' by schoolchildren who all traditionally went there for secondary education. When I was a lad, there was no choice, everyone had to go to the sixth form there.

To get back on topic a bit, in 1965 there were only a handful of services each way calling at the station. Demographic changes mean that there is now little employment in the area compared to then, hence the number of people living in Tre Gwyr and travelling to work in Swansea and beyond have meant that additional calls were required.

I have noted that there are a couple of regulars that travel to Gowerton from Llanelli, but despite the popularity of the station, I can't see FGW ever stopping a HST there, even if the platforms wer elong enough to allow it! Without the London service, I don't think it will ever earn the title of 'Best Connected Village'!

 

[pemma]

Bidston, Merseyside. Middle of nowhere but electric trains every 15 minutes on Liverpool-West Kirby line, plus diesels hourly on the Wrexham line.

Bidston is an interchange between the Merseyrail electric services to/from Liverpool and the ATW diesel services to/from Wrexham.

 

[Michael.Y]

Prepare for the pedants' revolt! (and not over that apostrophe!)

Paddington.

Marylebone.

 

[adrock1976]

Dalry and Glengarnock in Ayrshire. There are 3 trains per hour on Mondays to Saturdays to Glasgow Central and Kilwinning.

Also Bowling and Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire has 2 trains per hour daily to Balloch and Glasgow Queen Street low level (Mon - Sat)/Central low level (Sun).

Craigendoran 2 trains per hour daily to Helensburgh Central (one stop) and Edinburgh Waverley via Glasgow Queen Street low level, [the Teddy Bear town of] Airdrie, and Bathgate.

In peace
Adam

 

[MK Tom]

Oxenholme (Lake District)....

Only village station on the WCML according to Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxenholme_Lake_District_railway_station

Kings Langley, Cheddington and Polesworth spring to mind! If we count loops and branches, add Long Buckby, Tile Hill, Berkswell and Hampton in Arden.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Tile Hill is very much a part of Coventry.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

And Polesworth certainly isn't a contender for 'Best Connected Village'!

 

[Hebden Bridger]

Actually, Tiverton Rd / Jcn were down the line at Willand; Tiverton Parkway is on the site of what was formerly a Sampford Peverell station.

I'm very happy to be corrected, in that case I declare Sampford Peverell to be the village with unquestionably the best rail connections in the country.

 

[Strathclyder]

Newton (Lanark)? Half-hourly services to Motherwell, Milngavie, Glasgow Central (both High & Low Levels) & Balloch (Sundays only). There are also an hourly service to Lanark.

 

[MK Tom]

And Polesworth certainly isn't a contender for 'Best Connected Village'!

Haha, I was just pointing out Cheddington isn't ''the only village on the WCML''.

Counting Tiverton Parkway is a bit difficult as it's essentially a station for Tiverton rather than the original station on the site pre-Beeching. It's like Haddenham and Thame Parkway - the station is in Haddenham, which against my judgement is considered a village. But it also has the town of Thame in its name, despite that being several miles down the road, so is it a village station?

 

[W230]

Harlington, Bedfordshire? Or is it a town?

4tph to London and 4tph to Bedford off peak.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Just a thought- Par has a wide range of destinations, especially during the summer...

 

[All Line Rover]

Wrenbury, Prees and especially Yorton on the Crewe to Shrewsbury line don't do too bad; bi-hourly local service during the day with a couple of early morning and evening services going straight to South Wales from Manchester and vice versa. Nearby Market Drayton (which is a town not a village) doesn't even have a railway anymore..

I'm surprised those stations aren't closed. The passenger usage statistics aren't high enough to justify the intercity trains stopping* and they slow down the journey times for the majority of passengers. They are all fairly close to the busier stations of Nantwich, Whitchurch and Wem, and given they are all in the middle of nowhere almost everyone has a car and is capable of driving for 10 or so minutes to Nantwich, Whitchurch or Wem!

Just to put it into context, Crewe, Nantwich, Whitchurch, Wem and Shrewsbury have a combined usage of approximately 4,500,000 million passengers. Wrenbury, Prees and Yorton have a combined usage of approximately 30,000 passengers. That's a ratio of 1 in 150! Then one has to remember that many passengers from Wem, Whitchurch and Nantwich (particularly Nantwich) travel to and from Manchester, whereas most of those using Wrenbury, Prees and Yorton are only interested in local journeys to and from Shrewsbury.

*The only reason the early morning / late evening intercity trains stop on request is because the local stopping train doesn't operate at these times.

 

[Parallel]

I'm surprised those stations aren't closed. The passenger usage statistics aren't high enough to justify the intercity trains stopping* and they slow down the journey times for the majority of passengers. They are all fairly close to the busier stations of Nantwich, Whitchurch and Wem, and given they are all in the middle of nowhere almost everyone has a car and is capable of driving for 10 or so minutes to Nantwich, Whitchurch or Wem!

Just to put it into context, Crewe, Nantwich, Whitchurch, Wem and Shrewsbury have a combined usage of approximately 4,500,000 million passengers. Wrenbury, Prees and Yorton have a combined usage of approximately 30,000 passengers. That's a ratio of 1 in 150! Then one has to remember that many passengers from Wem, Whitchurch and Nantwich (particularly Nantwich) travel to and from Manchester, whereas most of those using Wrenbury, Prees and Yorton are only interested in local journeys to and from Shrewsbury.

*The only reason the early morning / late evening intercity trains stop on request is because the local stopping train doesn't operate at these times.

I think Wrenbury has a school, so I'm assuming there is a little traffic there around certain times, and passenger numbers have been growing for the past few years. I'm surprised Yorton actually has a footfall of just under 10,000 to be honest and I don't know much about Prees. I think the local service does a good job and I can understand these stops would add time onto the already long intercity services, however I'd actually say Wem gets a pretty poor service, and seems to get less than Whitchurch and Nantwich despite having a similar footfall.