Mornington Crescent!

[ffutures]

Assuming some sort of magical relationship between stations, railway lines, etc, with the same names... I need a succession of subway (or whatever) stations / lines that will take me from London to Los Angeles and back again, but preferably by a different return route.

For example, I could go from London (Royal Oak station) to Vancouver (Royal Oak Station) as one jump; in Vancouver there are apparently 47 stations on three or four lines; presumably one or more of them coincides with the name of a station or line in another city, and so forth.

Another example - there are three Cannon Street stations (although all are in Britain)

And another - there are Epping stations in London, Sydney, and Melbourne

What I would ideally like is one route out and another back, preferably via well-known cities etc, but I'll settle for a single route and obscure locations if it can't be done. Closed stations and lines are OK.

Anyone got any ideas on how to work this out - is there a master list of every subway station in the world somewhere?

later and it's cracked already, mostly by pauldrye! Many thanks to everyone who helped with this, it's greatly appreciated. Fanfic may ensue in due course...

Comments

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

I took a look at the London Underground list and you've got Queen's Park in common with Toronto.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[ckd]

I don't know if there's a meta-list, but Wikipedia entries for "List of City/System stations" are pretty good starting points.

Looking at the LA list, some nice generic names appear: Chinatown (shared with at least Boston's MBTA), Union Station (Washington DC Metro), Washington (formerly shared with MBTA station now named "Downtown Crossing"), Civic Center, Memorial Park....

Hmm. If you use the old name for what's now JFK/UMass (Columbia) you can do London→Vancouver (via Royal Oak)→MBTA (Columbia)→LACMTA (Chinatown). (Or just use Vancouver's "Stadium-Chinatown".)

DC Metro has a "Medical Center" station; that sounds like it might be a name duplicated elsewhere.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

[demonbrat-98.livejournal.com]

Chicago has Union Station (Amtrak and Metra [local commuter railroad]). It also has a Chinatown El station.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[nojay.livejournal.com]

What about non-English-speaking countries with native language names for their stations? For example Shimbashi station in Tokyo means "Newbridge" in Japanese.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Good question - I'm not a linguist, unfortunately, so I can't really hope to do then justice.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I doubt you have to. Just present it to the New Rules and Variants Committee of the Mornington Crescent International League for approval with the appropriate bribe fee, and I'm sure players all over the world will find the correspondences for you as soon as it's published on the website.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Whee! This is fun! I've mostly been following links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems where the station lists are usually a couple of clicks away, but still not too hard to scare up.

Some I've found:

The Montreal and Paris métros share a Saint-Michel.

New York City has the unusual situation of pairs and triads of stations with the same name because most are named after the street they cross and several major streets are crossed by more than one line (e.g., there are three 14th Street Stations).

Boston and New York share a Broadway Station.

Boston and Chicago share Wellington Station, and Singpore has one too.

Singapore and Austin, Texas each have a Downtown Station

Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto share a Church Station.

Glasgow and Toronto both have a Queen Station.

Toronto and Sydney both have a Museum Station.

Toronto and Miami have a University Station.

Union Station is a less common than I thought on subway lines, with "only" Washington DC, Toronto, and Los Angeles.

Boston and Philadelphia share a Chinatown Station.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Excellent - many thanks!

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

So at the very least you're looking at London to Toronto via Queen's Park, and then Toronto to Los Angeles via Union Station.

To get back by a different route you could go LA to San Francisco at Mariposa Station, San Francisco to Toronto via Church Station, then repeat yourself slightly by using Queen's Park again to get from Toronto to London. If you wanted to avoid the repeat you could go Toronto to Tyne and Wear Metro(!)'s University Station, and then from Tyne and Wear to London via Monument Station.

The major difficulty appears to be connections from London to anyplace else because the large majority of London's tube stations have idiosyncratic names.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Many thanks!

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

Church? Are you thinking of Wellesley?

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Ooo, darnit, you're right -- "Church" is called Wellesley. Serves me right, I've got on and off there so many times I don't even look at the sign any more. So the return route needs some reworking.

[timill]

There's a Union Station here in Dallas, on DART. Not much else looks good, though.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks!

[ianirving.livejournal.com]

Time for everyone's favorite game : Six degrees of Subway Stations!

a fun exercise!!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

[ianirving.livejournal.com]

always fun to to have an excuse to look at maps!

[dsample.livejournal.com]

It's currently closed, but there's a Victoria Station in Victoria BC, on Vancouver Island.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Closed stations work quite well for this - nice creepy ambience.

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

Technically, Royal Oak is not in Vancouver but the nearby suburb of Burnaby.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It appears to be part of an elevated railway too, but I'm not letting that bother me either...

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

I <3 this concept! =:o}

[usedsteel.livejournal.com]

Absolutely love the idea of jumping from one station to the next - perhaps you could check out the different event venues near the different london station by visiting http://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/London/ - that way you could see if you can marry up stations with pubs/club/restaurant names etc as well!