Trivia: Stations with the most platforms

[johnnychips]

This is great thread when you’re stuck at home. I thought it’d just be ‘Waterloo ‘, thread closed. But there are so many nuances it’s amazing!

At Sheffield platform 1a and 1b share the same platform edge and you can have separate trains in them at the same time. I have never seen a train displayed on the station as departing from just ‘Platform 1’, though RTT does. Platform 2 is split into 2a and 2b and trains are shown departing from either, or just platform 2. Platform 5 is similar. There is the anomalous platform 2c, which is a separate bay. The other bay platforms are 3 and 4, which are subdivided into a and b, and 7, which isn’t. Through platforms 6 and 8 are divided into a and b, but I’ve never seen two trains in at once...

So I reckon Sheffield could have between 9 and 16 platforms, depending how you count them.

 

[jopsuk]

if you include tube, then things get murky, as you could wind up counting Kings Cross & St Pancras as a single station complex with (currently) 35 platforms- 12 in Kings Cross (soon to be reduced to 11), 13 high level + 2 Thameslink in St Pancras, then 2 Sub Surface and 6 Tube in the shared Underground station.

Potentially even worse if/when Crossrail 2 gets built, as you can then add on 2 Euston-St Pancras CR2 platforms, 2 more subsurface at Euston Square (will get an underground link in Euston before then), 6 deep tube, and however many mainline platforms the full HS2 station will have. Fundamentally, though you would have to pass through gatelines, it would be possible to pass between all of these without exiting to a street and without boarding a train- a test which if used means that you should count Southwark as part of Waterloo

 

[30907]

p11a eastwards is easy via the mid platform crossover to the through line, likewise p11d westwards via the crossover to the through line. Would you mean p12a eastwards as this has to go via p12d.

Sorry, got my crossovers the wrong way round!

do you Class a and b as platforms or not?

I was trying to say you should only count them if there is a separate platform face (New Street, for example - 4a is a separate bay platform).

 

[London Trains]

In other words, platform numbers rather than letters...

Well for Birmingham New Street, each platform has an A and B end (and Pendolinos and double Voyagers use both ends), but there is also 4C which is a bay and a platform of it's own right. So it is the platform faces that should be counted.

4a is a separate bay platform

I assume you mean 4C?