Friends visit 70 railway stations in 12 hours

[Statto]

Not me but this

A group of friends set themselves a challenge of visiting 70 West Midlands railway stations in 12 hours - and were left "absolutely buzzing" after achieving their goal.
Alex Manners and his friends Luke, Ben and Max set off on their marathon trip from Earlswood near Solihull shortly after 08:00 GMT last Saturday and finished at Coventry Arena at 20:00.
"We knew people had done something similar on the London Underground," said Manners, who, like his friends, is autistic and works with train companies to make travelling more accessible.
A TikTok post , externalsharing the group's task has now been viewed about 100,000 times, and demonstrated, Manners said, "what an achievement this was" for them.
"It's Ben who is obsessed with trains, but I was absolutely buzzing for the whole day," he said, explaining how his friend had put together a schedule.
"It was one of the most exciting days I've ever had in the UK and now I feel like a train buff."

Image source,Alex Manners
Image caption,
The group photographed and filmed their journey and plan to make a film of their day to post on YouTube
Manners said: "I really love promoting awareness and understanding of autism, external and I do quite a bit of work with train companies to make train travel more accessible.
"I want to promote the challenges and positives of autism, show what an achievement this was and also to show what people with autism can do when they put their mind to it and how brilliantly autistic people can work together."

Solihull friends visit 70 railway stations in 12 hours

A TikTok post on their adventure shows "how brilliantly autistic people can work together".

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Kite159]

So is that visiting as in getting off the train, or visiting as in simply being on a train which called at the station?

 

[yorksrob]

Sounds like they had a grand day out.

Good for them !

 

[Forty29]

Absolutely. Well done guys!

 

[birchesgreen]

Superb adventure, well done to them!

 

[Trackman]

So is that visiting as in getting off the train, or visiting as in simply being on a train which called at the station?

It's all how visited is construed.
Had a quick google which tends to look they were stoppers, but I'm not watching all the Tik Toc video.

Anyway all the best to them on this achievement!

 

[centraltrains]

This was me! (Not quite sure how it qualified for a news article...). The others had the idea, and as the known rail enthusiast in the wider friend group I was asked to come up with a timetable, and then I ended up essentially becoming their tour guide for the day , was very fun though!

The scope was TfWM Zone 1-5 areas, riding on a train which stopped at each station (not the most well communicated, a lot of the TikTok comments are "what about Stafford/Leamington/Stratford etc."
With half hourly frequencies on much of the network and hourly on some I think it's unlikely it would've been feasible to visit/get off at each station in the day.

If anyone was interested the plan was as follows:

Route	Dep	Origin	Destination	Arr
Spoke 1	08:12​	Earlswood	Birmingham Moor Street	08:40​
Loop 4	08:40​	Birmingham Moor Street	Stourbridge Junction	09:17​
	09:30​	Stourbridge Junction	Stourbridge Town	09:33​
	09:35​	Stourbridge Town	Stourbridge Junction	09:38​
	09:50​	Stourbridge Junction	Smethwick Galton Bridge	10:06​
	10:20​	Smethwick Galton Bridge	Wolverhampton	10:37​
	10:48​	Wolverhampton	Birmingham New Street	11:15​
Spoke 2	11:43​	Birmingham New Street	Longbridge	12:05​
	12:12​	Longbridge	Birmingham New Street	12:33​
		Birmingham New Street	Birmingham Moor Street
BA2	12:53​	Birmingham Moor Street	Dorridge	13:16​
	13:34​	Dorridge	Small Heath	13:41​
	14:05​	Small Heath	Birmingham Moor Street	14:11​
		Birmingham Moor Street	Birmingham New Street
Loop 10r	14:36​	Birmingham New Street	Blake Street	15:06​
	15:21​	Blake Street	Duddeston	15:45​
	16:05​	Duddeston	Walsall	16:27​
	16:38​	Walsall	Bloxwich North	16:46​
	17:11​	Bloxwich North	Birmingham New Street	17:42​
Spoke 7	17:50​	Birmingham New Street	Birmingham International	18:08​
	18:16​	Birmingham International	Coventry	18:34​
	18:56​	Coventry	Coventry Arena	19:04​
				10:52​

We made a good start to the day with better than planned connections with the Stourbridge shuttle, gave us a bit of time for a lunch break, as most of the morning was scheduled around making the Bordesley stopper. Only timetable spill was at the end of the with the 18:16 cancelled/expressed and the one after we cheated between Canley and Coventry and got a taxi into Coventry due to an axle counter signal failure (although as the taxi came the train left so could've stayed on the train ).

I also found a route with an hours theoretical time saving of an hour starting on the 06:23 Bloxwich North to Wolverhampton, getting all the Chase and Wov local stations in one go but wasn't a good starting options for us logistically.