UK Pair Will Visit All 2563 Rail Stations in Britain This Summer

A train-loving UK couple is on a mission this summer to visit as many of Great Britain’s railway stations as possible. Since May, Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe have been working to hit up all 2563 stations, shooting video and posting updates to social media along the way.

Both Marshall and Pipe are serious train buffs. Marshall, a video producer, previously created videos about each of the London Underground lines for Londonist, and Pipe works at the London Transport Museum (she’s taking a sabbatical for the trip).

All the Stations isn’t a race, so they’ll keep at it until they’ve covered the entire island, though their goal is to finish the journey in three months. They are documenting their travels as a way to explore the state of Britain’s rail infrastructure and visit little-known places along the routes. Their goals include posting four videos of four different days of travel per week, live streaming between video posts, and making a feature documentary about the project at the end of the summer.

The project was partially funded on Kickstarter, where they raised more than $50,600 in early 2017 for their trip—which helped pay for the more than $13,000 in train tickets.

The pair has set out parameters for what exactly counts as a stop. They have to arrive or leave on a scheduled train passing through each stop, but they don't have to get off at every one. They’re not counting abandoned stations, nor do subways or heritage railways count, and they are sticking to mainland Britain rather than venturing to Northern Ireland.

They’ve been averaging about 30 stations per day. As of July 26, they have made it to 2089 stations, putting them more than 80 percent of the way there. They’ve only got 474 left to go on the way to Thurso, the northernmost town on the British mainland, which they plan to hit in August.