Mineycart

Birmingham International

The journey begins!

On Thursday 11th January 2024, I unknowingly began my journey to visit all 2,581 stations in the UK. I started by taking a visit to Birmingham International to watch some express services go up and down the lines. I could have done this from my local station, but I always enjoy it more when the trains actually stop so you can properly take them in. Following on from this, I didn't photograph myself visiting any new railway stations (and in fact didn't visit any new ones - with one exception) until the 17th May. On this day, I went on my first trip with a West Midlands DayTripper ticket, a ticket that would allow me to travel around the entirety of the West Midlands for as little as £8.20 for the whole day (after 9:30am). During my time with my support worker (who in fact used to work on the railway for 20 years before leaving for to be a social worker!), we visited a number of stations, and although I didn't take pictures at most of them due to it not really being my plan to visit every station yet.

The ones I did take a picture of though, were Sandwell and Dudley, Marston Green and Birmingham New Street. The pictures of these stations remain to this day to be the only three photos I did not take as they were in fact taken by my support worker.

Leamington Spa

The challenge begins!

After returning from my trip on the 17th May I had processed all the photos I took from that day and around the same time as doing this on the 21st May a railway YouTuber I enjoy by the name of Nick Badley had shared a video on how to set up a cool custom map of all the stations in the UK and how to mark off the ones you had been to ... you can see where this is going xD. I made the spreadsheet there and then and thus the challenge was born. But what were the rules to this challenge? Well they were simple.

• In order for a station to count as visited I must either board or alight from a train at said station
• The trains have to be different meaning I can't just get off, look around for 5 seconds then get back on the same train
• I also would need a picture of myself standing in front of the station sign, something I already had for 4 stations I'd been to so far so that would be easy enough.

So with those rules set for myself and the map created using Nick's tutorial the journey was well and truly on and the first station I visited was ... Lea Hall! Yes I know it's not much, but it was on my way home from visiting family, so I thought I'd stop off for a bit and have a look and, honestly, it was kinda nice! The next day I visited Coventry and Leamington Spa due to having some work I needed to do in Leamington. I'd been to Leamington before for similar work, but I'd never before took the time to properly look around and explore the station. When I did I found it to be incredibly beautiful with a whole assortment of flowers towards the south end of platform 2. Soon however I would begin properly with my first full on day trip using the West Midlands Daytripper all by myself!

Sutton Coldfield

The first day trip!

On Wednesday 12th June I took my first full on day trip out on the railways all by myself but this time with a bit of an add-on (quite literally) because this time I brought not just the daytripper ticket for £8.20 but also one of the optional add-ons you can buy with it. This particular one offers journeys north of Bloxwich North where the standard daytripper runs out all the way to the branch line's terminus at Rugeley Trent Valley, a station on the West Coast Mainline in the so-named Trent Valley that runs between Rugby and Stafford. On this day I visited a number of new stations including Adderley Park, Smethwick Galton Bridge, Tyseley, Dorridge, Birmingham Snow Hill, Five Ways, University, Walsall and the terminus of Rugeley Trent Valley. In total this day brought the station total up to 16, but there would be more to come very soon.

On Tuesday 18th June I was extremely lucky to be able to go on another railway trip so soon after the last one. This was thanks to a very generous donation I'd received on my new Kofi page by German Harry Potter speed-runner Nixxo. On this day I was able to visit a further number of new stations including Wolverhampton, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham Moor Street, Tile Hill, Coseley, Rowley Regis, Old Hill and Longbridge bringing the total up to 24.

Next to July and the 11th which is PAY DAYYYY. Anyways I took a brief afternoon trip to a few stations near central Birmingham including Stechford, The Hawthorns, Langley Green and Smethwick Rolfe Street. Then just two days later on Saturday 13th July I went on another full day journey visiting many stations. These were Selly Oak, Bournville, Kings Norton, Northfield, Sutton Coldfield, Wylde Green, Chester Road, Erdington, Wythall, Whitlocks End, Bordesley, Small Heath, Shirley, Hall Green, Stourbridge Junction, Stourbridge Town, Gravelly Hill, Duddeston and Aston. This brought our total up to 47. But I was far from done for train trips in July!

Just 3 days later on Tuesday 16th July I took ANOTHER full day trip on the railways and this was a special day because I managed to reach 50 stations visiting Solihull, Widney Manor before reaching station #50 at Acocks Green. This station held a strange place in my heart as I used to walk the long distance from where I used to live back in late 2021 to this station on days when I needed to get out of the house. These were honestly quite dark times for me looking back and I don't think I realised how low I was during those times until my visit to Acocks Green that day. The visit brought the memories flooding back and with it a lot of heavy emotions. I was very happy therefore to continue on my journey for that day continuing to visit Olton, Earlswood, Spring Road, Yardley Wood, Tipton, Dudley Port, Cradley Heath, Lye, Tame Bridge Parkway, Bescot Stadium, Witton, Hamstead, Perry Barr, Blake Street, Four Oaks and Butlers Lane bringing my station count up to 66 stations meaning I had visited 19 new stations in that one day!

Manchester Piccadilly

Going on Holiday

In early August I had booked train tickets to go and see Orsokuma (the person who actually owns the server on which this site runs - thanks bear!) as I had done twice before. Usually I would take the most direct route for this journey with as few changes as possible but with my new challenge I knew this would be a perfect opportunity to tick off some new stations that might be slightly harder to access normally. Using this strategy I was able to tick off Stockport, Manchester Oxford Road and Bolton on my way to visiting Bear. On Friday 9th August myself and Bear took a trip to Liverpool to visit a mutual friend of ours. To get there we ended up passing through Wigan thus allowing me to tick off Wigan North Western, Wigan Wallgate as well as Liverpool Lime Street off my list of stations to visit.

The very next day I took a trip on my own to explore the railways around Manchester. This time using a Rail Rover on the Bee Network costing me £8.80. In this day I managed to visit 8 new stations, these being Manchester Piccadilly, Navigation Road, Salford Crescent, Salford Central, Manchester Victoria, Cheadle Hulme, Manchester Airport and Deansgate. This brought my total up to 80 stations. Finally on the way home I ticked off Crewe station again having brought a ticket with more changes to be able to change there. Sadly due to delays I only had a few minutes there so just about had enough time to grab a picture, I 100% want to and need to go back to be able to explore the station properly as it's a beautiful station that sees so much traffic. It would be a wonderful place to do some train spotting.

Shrewsbury

The Road to 100!

After having spent around £50-£60 on train tickets + food and supplies for the days out in August I did not expect to be going on another day trip in August ... well I ended up being wrong about that as an opportunity presented itself, and I was able to go on another trip. On this day I managed to tick off 9 more stations, 1 less than the planned 10 because I was an idiot and misread my departure time from Kidderminster on my plan as 14:47 and not 14:37 thus causing me to miss the trains I was supposed to be catching. However, things probably worked out in my favour as some trains around the ones I ended up travelling on were canceled, and although I don't know for certain it was a train on which I would've travelled, I had a strong suspicion it would have been. Anyways on this day I managed to visit 9 stations like I said, those were Lichfield Trent Valley, Lichfield City, Shenstone, Kidderminster, Hagley, Blakedown, Canley, Hampton-In-Arden and Berkswell. The missed train did turn out to be a confirmed blessing in disguise however because I was able to successfully visit the latter 3 stations which were the only 3 stations on the Coventry to Wolverhampton line I hadn't ticked off.

Exactly one week later I was able to visit the railway again thanks to another kind tip from a friend. Using the money they gave me I was able to get a daytripper ticket and some food for an afternoon journey of fun. On this day I visited just two new stations those being Bloxwich and Bloxwich North, both stations were simply designed but in all honesty had a nice feeling to them with lots of green around them despite being in a built-up urban area. This brought my total station count to 92 but this posed a problem. The only station left within the standard West Midlands Day Tripper zone was Coventry Arena (a small modern station for the so-named Coventry Arena in ... well Coventry). Therefore, I would need to go further afield to reach 100 stations! So I did just that.

On Saturday 14th September I woke up extremely early at 6am having only gotten around 4 hours of sleep to begin my journey to the 100th station, a journey that due to the infrequent service of the line I had chosen would take a good majority of the day. The line I chose was the line between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury so after an early morning trip to McDonald's in Wolverhampton Town Centre I began my journey up the line ticking off Bilbrook, Codsall, Albrighton, Cosford, Shifnal, Oakengates, Wellington before finally arriving into Shrewsbury at around 15:30 on Transport for Wales Class 158823. And that was it, I'd done it, 100 stations! Even typing this now it's crazy to me to think that in a few short weeks I've managed to reach 100 stations and apparently according to my calculations 4% of the overall total which is insane! There's still a long way to go though as there's some 2000 stations in the UK but ticking off the first 100 just feels ... like a huge achievement in itself. On to the next 100!

Finally to finish off this month's trips I travelled back home ticking off Telford Central on the way and then on Monday 16th September on the way home from visiting family I ticked off Coventry Arena, the final station within the standard West Midlands DayTripper area. If I want to continue further I will now need to be looking at the extensions as well as other rovers up north when I go to visit friends.

Stratford-upon-Avon

A trip to visit a friend

Exactly one month after my visit to Coventry arena and after coming back from a trip to Coniston in the lake district I was back on the rails again and this time off to visit a long time friend I've had since reception since I hadn't seen since before the pandemic. He now lives in Stratford-Upon-Avon so of course I took the opportunity to visit some railway stations while I was at it. Across the day I managed to visit 4 new stations, those being: Warwick, Lapworth, Stratford Upon Avon and Kenilworth.

Hednesford

The first vlog

After over 100 stations I had finally built up the courage to start vlogging my experiences visiting stations. So, on the 22nd November 2024 I took myself, my camera and my microphone up the Chase line to finally finish off the stations between Rugely Trent Valley and Bloxwich North. The day was a lot of fun and an exciting adventure as I tried out vlogging my journeys for the first time. We managed to visit 4 new stations during the morning those being Rugely Town, Landywood, Hednesford and Cannock.

I returned home after that day full of excitement and curiosity at what my first vlog out in the wild would be like. After much hard work I was very happy and proud of the results.

The Lakes

A fond farewell

After getting some good feedback on my first vlog that I had done in November, I took to the rails again in December this time for a full on day of new stations and fond(ish) goodbyes.

I started my day at 7am at Solihull station before travelling via the Chiltern HST to Warwick Parkway. While at Warwick Parkway I got to watch the sunrise over the treeline, and it was an incredibly beautiful sight. After watching the sunrise I boarded another train which took me to Hatton where I was the only passenger to get off the train using the guard door (this made me feel like royalty xD).

After waiting at Hatton for a while for my next train I began my journey along the single track line between Hatton and Wilmcote visiting Bearley and Claverdon, two half request stop stations (half because Chiltern trains stop there but West Midlands Railways ones do not). After losing signal at Claverdon, I then went to the confusingly-named Stratford-Upon-Avon Parkway. Confusing, because a lot of online resources - such as Realtime Trains and Network Rail Enquires - refer to it as Stratford Parkway. However, the signage still calls it by its full name.

To finish off my time in the Stratford area I visited Wilmcote before boarding a train to travel up the Shakespeare line. The first station I arrived at was "The Lakes" a confusingly named station with no lakes in sight. That was until I walked down the road and found the beautiful Earlswood Lakes which gave me a lot of joy on that weirdly warm December day.

Moving on from The Lakes, I continued on to visit: Wootton Wawen, Wood End and Henley In Arden before racing back to Coventry to ride on the final ever Avanti Class 221 voyager from Coventry to Birmingham New Street and getting to watch it depart for the final time along with tens of other rail enthusiasts.

I then returned home and edited another vlog which turned out to be so long it got split into two!

Worcester Shrub Hill

1 Year Anniversary

After 6 months of visiting stations, 2024 had come to a close. 2025 was officially here and with it on January 11th 2025 came my inadvertent 1-year celebration of my journey thus far. On that particularly foggy day I took a trip south towards the city infamous for mispronunciations to do with their sauces: Worcester.

On the way however I of course had to pay visit to some stations and ticked off Bromsgrove and Droitwich Spa before arriving into Worcester Foregate Street. After watching trains through the fog for an hour at Foregate Street I officially popped my Great Western Railways cherry and rode on one of their class 800 units towards Worcester Shrub Hill on unit 800 021.

I stayed in the Worcester area for some hours before making my way out of Worcester and heading for Barnt Green, the start of the Redditch branch of the Birmingham Cross City line a station of which its layout was familiar to me having visited Cheadle Hulme during my time in Manchester the year before. Both stations are on a junction of two railways lines and thus have a straight platform and a curved one for the line that peels off from the main one.

After changing platforms I took the train to Alvechurch where I discovered a curious public footpath trailing from the station exit. Having some time before my next train I decided to take a wonder and uncovered what I didn't realise at the time was a canal. I vowed to return in warmed climates and rushed back to the station to catch my train to Redditch.

After arriving at Redditch I slightly cheated and hopped back on the same train as I didn't want to spend half an hour in the cold waiting for the train back to Birmingham. Once I arrived back in Birmingham I took a train up to Tame Bridge Parkway. There I was able to watch the many diverts that were happening due to engineering works happening between New Street and Wolverhampton. It was so cold that I looked like I was smoking constantly with the way my breath was instantly turning into condensation as I spoke. Finally, I finished my day by taking the train to Wolverhampton and then riding on the Avanti pride train back home to end the day in colourful style :)