Great Western Coffee Shop

Channel 4, Sunday 1 May

http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/d5hyns/paul-mertons-secret-stations--series-1-episode-1 (http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/d5hyns/paul-mertons-secret-stations--series-1-episode-1)

De riguer.  ;D

Does that mean BNM that you go around with a mannish scowl or is that reserved for gateline staffers at Paddington ?! ::)

Looking ahead to episode 2:


I'm scratching my head on "middle of Bristol".  St. Andrew's Road, by any chance, or is there a staff platform somewhere?

St Andrew's Road isn't a request stop. Neither is the other possible candidate, Pilning.

I've no idea what station the quote is referring to.

With all the usual provisos about accuracy  ::) here's a Wikipedia list of request stops. They seem to make it 144 but Merton's programme bumf says 152...?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Railway_request_stops_in_Great_Britain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Railway_request_stops_in_Great_Britain)

This suggests that St. Andrew's Road is a request stop but something tells me 'BNM knows best'  ;D

Accuracy not great.  Finstock is listed, but (correctly) Combe, Ascott and Shipton are not.  All used to be request stops many years ago on the halts train, but now none of them are - most probably because there's nearly always at least one passenger for the few trains a day that call.

Does St Andrew's Road operate as a request stop for certain services? Avoncliff is listed and Freshford used to be a request stop quite a few years ago.

Avoncliff is no longer a request stop ... but Dilton Marsh (unlisted) is.   Dilton Marsh is just about it the Bristol Travel to Work area, and if you're standing at Bristol Temple Meads listening for announcements, you'll hear "passenger wishing to alight must inform the conductor on the train".   There are 3 other stations you'll hear that for at Bristol Temple Meads too.

All timetabled services now stop.

The Channel 4 press information for the show gives the details if you want the answer...

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/paul-mertons-secret-stations

Well... if it was filmed before December 2014 then, yes, St Andrew's Road was a request stop. Not since then though.

St keyne I expect he will visit the music museum. I remember going with my Grandad as a child.

Wonderful irony here.  Mentioned this programme to bignosemac last week and then totally forgot about it.  Now set to record!

It's your age, old boy.  ;) :D ;D

I really can't argue with that - I think you are right!!

The museum has been closed for a few years now and the sign which was on that platform has been removed.

Breich in the Scottish central belt used to be a request stop, now the one train a day booked to call in each direction always stops (unless the driver forgets!).

I can't think what else he would of stopped and explored at st keyne then. I will watch with interest as I've not long moved to liskeard and finding my feet.

according to this http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/paul-mertons-secret-stations he visits the well at St Keyne.

This all sounds like a direct crib from the book 'Tiny Stations' by, I think, Dixie Wills or someone. Anyway, it is a good read, which I thoroughly recommend.

He met and spoke with Dixie at a request stop of course.

I enjoyed the show tonight, wasn't overly railway with a focus on the attractions at the stops.

At the beginning he appeared to suggest that the Cally Sleeper (a long train in any case) is 32 coaches long.

We all know that it's 2 trains of 16, but that wasn't the way he described it.

Good programme otherwise, the bit at Drigg (Nuclear Waste Storage Facility) was pretty thought-provoking.

On a similar printed theme, I picked up a copy of "Tiny Stations" by Dixe Wills on Saturday.

The Spectator (http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/04/tiny-stations-by-dixe-wills-review/) reviewed this book in 2014 and wrote:


So you have 6 pages on Bugle (sounds like a trumpet), 5 pages on PenyChain (sounds like flushing the loo) ... and 38 pages on Altnabreac.  I'm so tempted to go and take in all the activities at Altnabraec, but the £277.40 return fare (off peak, not via London) or £450 (should I choose to start on the 07:20 or 07:49 and need an anytime ticket) seems high ... and I should probably take it in on a future all line Rover!

After the tv show aired I visited at least 3 or 4 request stops. As expected in most of them there was very little to do. I've used all 3 on the Looe Valley to save myself walking up the hill back to Liskeard, having walked to each of the stations from my home. Menheniot is on my to do list, maybe sooner than later, and then walk home.

The thing about places where nothing happens is that you can make them whatever you will. Places are places and love them or hate them we can all see what there is in New York or Stonehenge, but the spaces between the places are full of possibility. In Japanese there is apparently a word meaning "the space between words". Similarly, a woman I know who is a – pretty much by profession – a long-distance cyclist (she does things like ride from Alaska to Vancouver, sleeping in a tent, in midwinter, then writes about it – and gets books published, and I don't mean vanity publishing) – says some of her favourite places are the places between places. The places with no names. The places where you have to request a stop (or maybe build your own halt).

I was looking for a different place, which I didn't find, but here's a pretty good place that's not a place, in Poland:

(http://m.retro.pewex.pl/uimages/services/pewex/i18n/pl_PL/201311/gallery_478527_52306013854703751307215812.jpg)

It means "Without a name" (slightly ungrammatically but no other interpretation is possible)!

And if I knew how to make the image a bit smaller, I would.  :(




Edit note: Done. CfN. ;)

I've just found this thread, so am resurrecting it to ask these questions.

What are the criteria for deciding that a station is treated as a request stop rather than a regular stop?

How are any changes to this advertised? I use Avoncliff occasionally and Freshford more often, and was never aware of seeing anything to say they either of these were no longer request stops (but had noticed over time the mention of them as request stops not being made on the train itself). I know Freshford hasn't been for many years but don't remember seeing anything published to tell me that, and as for Avoncliff, I still think of it as one, and when I've been there I've seen other passengers putting their arms out to signal to the approaching train.

On a related subject, I know that some TOs seem to not mention request stops when listing the stations they are stopping at (both on the station screens and on the train itself). I've certainly been on plenty of Arriva's Holyhead trains that made no mention of the a possibility of being able to alight at any of the other Anglesey stations, which are all request stops, even though they are listed in the timetable as stopping places for that train. From experience, it is very disconcerting being on a train that says its next stop is Holyhead when it pulls out of Bangor station, when you are wanting to get off at Llanfair PG (as I was), despite reassurances from the train manager.

Once a request stop gets to the stage that virtually every train that can stop actually does stop, I believe it ceases to be a request stop ... and there are also visibility criteria which may have got a bit more restrictive over the years too.

With traffic growth being the predominant direction for most stations, and as a reduction to request status would wave a great big red flag about a station, reduction of stations from regular to request is pretty rare.   There was a question in autumn 2013 about whether the trial TransWilts services during the day and evening should only call at Melksham on request, based on figures of about 10 passenger arrivals and 10 passenger departures from the station each day at the time, all of whom were on the trains at "peak times". A view was taken that if the new service did modestly well, most trains would be stopped anyway, as there would be substantially more that 20 passenger joins / leaves spread over the 16 trains.


As I recall, the change at Avoncliff crept into the timetable with the quiet replacement of "x" with ":".


The Cardiff to Holyhead trains certainly state in their announcements that "this train will call at the following major stations" and the definition of "major" seems to mean ones that the train always calls at, even if there are no passengers.    When you think of it "This train WILL call at Valley ...." would be a bit of a lie in an announcement if there's no-one to get off and no-one waiting on the platform there.

Are the announcements bilingual?  If so, it may be to avoid the announcements going on for ever when repeated (as happens at stations, where the train for the Heart of Wales line will be half way to its next stop before the announcement has finished).

A station can also be a request stop due to tight timings on the line it's on. Perranwell became a request stop when the loop at Penryn was installed and should a train not stop there it helps the line run to time.

Similarly I seem to recall that Gowerton was a request stop until the line through it was redoubled because it was on the single-track bottleneck section. In such cases I presume the 'request' status remains even if virtually every services timetabled to call are in fact requested to stop.

No, the announcements on the train are in English only (which of course might be a reason why they don't attempt to pronounce the request stops, as they are mostly Welsh names, except of course Valley). When you've heard Flandidno Junction said a few times, I would imagine the Welsh get pretty sick of hearing them.

I'm not sure if they do the same for Anglesey, but when Gowerton was a request stop it seemed to be tagged onto the announcement as 'Gowerton stops are made only by request' after the 'principal stations' bit. There wasn't much of a breath between the last 'principal' stop and the first 'request' stop. I have a feeling it was only announced a few stops before, perhaps intentionally to shorten the announcement. Apparently when the 175s were first introduced the system assumed a stop had been made after each door cycle, which meant it went out of sync with request stops - I'm not sure if they still do it like that or perhaps by distance or GPS now, but perhaps only announcing 'principal' stops is perhaps a throwback to this issue.

That is what happens on the Weymouth line as well for the Dorset request stops, but it doesn't happen on the Anglesey line (or at least hasn't happened when I've traveled along there). They just ignore the existence of those stations altogether.

I don't know about Anglesey either, but as far as I can recall the automated announcements on 175s normally list only principal stations, with each request stop announced only once in the whole journey. I think that announcement is when the train departs the previous principal station, eg. on leaving Pembrey & Burry Port a Milford Haven service that calls at Kidwelly and Ferryside would say "We will be calling at the following principal stations: Carmarthen, Whitland, Haverfordwest and Milford Haven. Kidwelly and Ferryside stops are only made by request...". Clunderwen and Clarbeston Road aren't mentioned until leaving Whitland, and presumably Johnston would be announced on departure from Haverfordwest. That's how I think it goes anyway.

Here's a histogram of station usage along the North Wales coast:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/nwalesnos.jpg)

Graphic representation of the relative importance of each station.

I'm no statistician, but I'd be interested to understand how that graph represents the relative importance of each station.

I can see how it represents popularity or frequency of use, but wouldn't a graph showing relative importance actually look a little different to that shown?

For instance Valley, serving as it does the RAF station at which all of the RAF’s jet combat pilots pass through, should presumably rank a little higher in terms of importance than say Prestatyn, gateway to Pontins?

I suppose it all comes down to how you measure importance. It just looks a little odd to me, that's all.

At the risk of digression, one of those would be very useful to demonstrate why the increase in frequency on the Henley branch makes perfect sense, despite the impact on intermediate calls.

Please feel free to quote this in that other thread:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/tvbranches.jpg)

I have added the Marlow branch as it provides an interesting comparison.

No, it is a graphic representation, I assume, of the number of tickets sold to/from those destinations.

It does not take into account:

a) How many trains stop at the stations - all for those that have highest usage, far fewer for those with the smallest.
b) The nature of journeys made and how this affects the ticket they buy.

As an example of the latter, the journey I've described on other posts involved us buying a return ticket from Llanfairpwll to Rhosneigr, two of the request stops that have higher usage than others (not surprising as they have the highest populations). However, our actual journey involved alighting at Bodorgan, to then walk along the Anglesey coast around to Rhosneigr. Bodorgan (and Ty Croes) have no hinterland populations (probably less than 100 people live within a mile of each station) but both have potential for rural tourism of the sort we undertook, and are important in that respect.

Correct - it's a graphic representation of the ORR's ticket sales figures for entrances and exits, and subject to the usual cautions that are expressed withe the ORR figures.

Llandudno Junction in particular is likely to be distorted if you look at traffic along the North Wales coast as it also has Llandudno local and Conway Valley local traffic shown, and also people transferring from the main line to those services not shown.

It would be possible to do all sorts of things with the figures such as divide them by the number of trains calling (and what does "calling" mean for one that terminates / does that count as 1 or 0.5?) and theres no indiction of shrinkage, growth, or potential in the diagram.

Edit to fix quoting