One thing I count every February is how many trains I travel on. But I was tallying something extra this year - the name of the train operator. And so I can confirm, somewhat excitedly, LAST MONTH I TRAVELLED WITH EVERY TRAIN OPERATOR IN LONDON.
This includes TfL, GWR, c2c and all the others that operate journeys in the capital.
I have not included operators that only operate outside London.
❌ CrossCountry, Merseyrail, Northern, ScotRail, Island line, Transpennine Express, TfW, West Midlands Railway
And I have not included operators that serve only one London station, it had to be possible to make a journey inside Greater London.
❌ Avanti West Coast, Caledonian Sleeper, EMR, Eurostar, Gatwick Express, Grand Central, Hull Trains, LNER, Lumo
This leaves 15, depending on your definition of train operator.
✅ c2c, Chiltern, Elizabeth line, Greater Anglia, Great Northern, GWR, Heathrow Express, London Overground, LNWR, Southeastern, Southern, Stansted Express, SWR, TfL, Thameslink
Note: Technically the Overground operator is Arriva Rail London. Note: Technically Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink are all part of 'Govia Thameslink Railway'. Note: Technically the Stansted Express is part of Greater Anglia. Note: Technically the government is the operator for c2c, Greater Anglia, LNWR, Southeastern and SWR but I treated them all as separate.
Some of these 15 operators are easy and some are hard. Here are the harder ones.
• The Heathrow Express only runs from London to Heathrow and is a rip-off. However it's free to ride the Heathrow Express between Heathrow terminals so that's what I did.
• The only LNWR journey within London is between Euston and Harrow & Wealdstone.
• The only Stansted Express service within London is between Liverpool Street and Tottenham Hale.
• GWR's only service between London stations is the Greenford shuttle (other than a few Crossrail stand-ins in the middle of the night).
• Chiltern have only nine stations in London, that's Marylebone, Harrow-on-the-Hill and seven stations up the line to South Ruislip, generally only served once an hour.
The rest are easy.
Two-thirds of my journeys last month were on TfL services (tube 124, DLR 25, tram 5).
I also made 23 Crossrail journeys and 16 Overground journeys.
Of the remaining 44 rail journeys, almost half were with just two operators (Southeastern 11, SWR 9).
For completeness sake I also rode on every Overground line and every tube line.
If I were a YouTuber I'd probably try to do them all in one day as part of a video called I HAVE BEEN ON EVERY TRAIN OPERATOR IN LONDON. But I'm not, and it would be quite dull. All of them in a month is quite enough.
I wonder how many other people have done them all in a year, let alone a month.
