He's twiceheld the record for visiting every London Underground station in the shortest possible time. He's driven across America to visit a place in each mainland state with the same name as a London Underground station. And now he's turned his sights to visiting all the National Rail stations in Great Britain, all 2563 of them.
The project's called All The Stations, and kicked off in Penzance at the weekend, with approximately three more months of touring the country still to go. The Rail Delivery Group are supporting the project, along with a substantial total crowd-funded from the public via Kickstarter, without which none of this would be happening. The plan requires roving couple Geoff and Vicki to travel on trains scheduled to stop at all the stations, even if they don't get off, and to record the shenanigans as they go. It is the ultimate in railway-related completism.
Ultimately there'll be a big long video compilation of the entire journey to watch, but in the meantime the team are publishing several videos a week relating daily adventures, the first of which went live at 10am yesterday. There'll be another at 10am this morning. I mention this because a lot of you like railways, and travelling, but you don't have to like railways to find this interesting.
There is a website with all the details, including a map showing all the stations All the Stations has been to so far. There's a YouTube channel to subscribe to, where well over fifty ten-minute-ish videos will appear at frequent intervals. It's also possible to follow the journey closer to real time on Twitter, on Facebook and on Instagram... which thus far have confirmed that Cornwall and Devon are gorgeous, that railway staff work damned hard, and that trains generally, but not always, keep to time.
You too could buy an All Line Rover and tour the railway network at will, but you probably don't have the time to visit All The Stations, so why not live vicariously via two people who do? How fantastic to be able to see the entirety of Great Britain by train. It really does pay to be a completist.
Geoff Marshall is a completist.
