Hello!
Hello there
(laughing)
Uh, Vicki's here today, uh, I'm Geoff.
We're very excited, uh, because we've come to
I think it's in here, I think I've found the entrance
I don't know, I've never been here before.
It's not clear, is it.
It's a very special video. Vicki, what are we doing?
We're doing...
Least used London Waterloo
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
So it's always quite exciting, because I never know,
I'm quite nervous when you come to like
a new station you've never been to before.
Yeah.
It's like, is is going to be quiet?
Is there going to be anyone here?
Do you wanna go, do you wanna go do ticket machines first?
Yeah, okay.
Vicki, can you go and see, I think our first thing is
are there any ticket machines at this station?
Maybe...
Oh hang on, it, is it
That might be over here.
Okay, all right.
So it looks as though there might be a ticket machine.
I think these are the ticket machines.
Now, disappointingly, it's a ticket machine,
and not a permit to travel.
I was hoping for a permit to travel machine.
Is it not a permit to travel? Oh...
Well what do you do then late at night, if...
Yeah.
Because really these aren't like,
They can't-
They can't be, you can't operate them all the time.
They can't be on all day. So there must be,
there must be a permit to travel machine later at night
Okay.
Do you want to count to see how many
ticket machines there are?
There's 12 here,
There might be, there might be, there might be
one more, there might be one more down this end.
I mean, these are probably old ones
that haven't been working for some time, right?
They'd have been out of commission.
Hang on, there are more. Did we,
did we get these ticket machines earlier?
No, because if that was...
I'm not convinced we did these ticket machines earlier.
So
32. There's also though, I think...
I- Was there a ticket office?
I thought there was a ticket office.
So there only...(sigh) There's only 32 ticket machines.
Do you want to go any see if there's a ticket office?
It's probably closed.
It's probably, it's probably not even staffed anymore.
Yeah.
Go and have a look?
They might have a permit to travel.
Let's go and have a look.
I think there's a ticket office down this end of the,
of the, you know, of the station.
Oh, look! There's a, there's a tiny little ticket office.
So from what I can see,
the ticket office is staffed. So that's handy, actually.
So there is actually a place to buy, to buy a ticket.
I guess it's good, because there are only 32
self-service machines.
Yeah, yeah.
So, if, if you're a bit confused, or
Yeah, yeah, then you could come and,
come and buy your ticket here.
You could talk to somebody, yeah.
Okay. What I think, Vicki, uh, next, uh,
we need to check out the timetable board,
so we need to go and see, cause it's probably only like,
one or two trains a day from here, right?
Yeah.
So we need to go and count how many,
how many services leave
Quite a limited service, I think.
I think it's limited service, yeah.
Yeah, let's go and,
can you see where the timetable boards are?
If we start at this end,
I'm just going to quickly count, you ready?
So, disappointingly, there's only 5-
over 500 services that leave Waterloo a day.
There's 500?
So, if you wanna, if you wanna come here as well,
if you wanna do-
Like this is a great place to have an adventure,
have a day out. If you wanna have an adventure,
you need to like, schedule your day, so you can catch
over one of the 500 trains that runs here,
because if you mis-time it, you,
you could be waiting a long time to get the next train,
because there's only, there's only five to six hundred.
Do which, do which, now we-
If there are only, sorry, massive numbers for my brain,
Yeah.
If there are only 500 trains,
Yeah.
How many passengers is there?
Uh, do you wanna go and do passenger statistics?
I think it's, I think it's time for some statistics.
If we go,
we'll go and find a bench and do passenger statistics.
Okay.
Okay. All right.
Uh, so we've come to a quiet bench.
Actually, I don't know if they've seen any of the benches,
we'll have to check that out.
We should count the number of benches, yeah.
Um, we've come to talk
Passenger statistics
Passenger stats
So,
Oh, you went for stats and I said statistics.
It's all right. So Vicki, drumroll
(hand slapping on thighs)
The least used station that is London Waterloo
only got
99.4 million passengers.
Just a tiny, small number.
What is that per day?
So I've divided that by 365-
Is that, does it get a Sunday service?
I didn't even check.
So we should check on the timetable board. I forgot.
Let's assume it gets a Sunday service.
Okay.
Uh, so it only gets, uh, 272,328 people a day.
Woah!
Which is like almost nothing.
That's nothing!
That's nothing.
No wonder it's so quiet.
Yeah.
They've done that thing with the clock,
that you, um, you know,
like in some places they put a little guard over it,
and it really bugs you.
They've done that thing here where they've put it
out of people's reach. They've put it really high up.
So that people don't steal it.
I can't, I can't, I can't reach the clock, Vicki!
(Laughs)
So you're not supposed to!
So Vicki's saying,
Where is it? I can't see it. You're saying there's a
It's here! It's here.
So, where is there a dot-
You said somewhere there's a dot-matrix screen.
Yes. Yeah.
Oh, so if you look up,
Yes.
Oh, I've just seen it. I've just seen it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if you look up, then it tells you
where the occasional train is.
(Upbeat techno music)
You know when, on all the stations
and we saw people the presentation teams that go around
to different stations.
So there's a,
Ah.
There's a guy here sorting out the bins.
Ah, so luckily we've turned up on the day
Yeah! (laughs)
When, when the- Because he probably only comes around
like once a week he's coming
Once a week, yeah, yeah.
To kinda do the, to do the litter bins.
And we have found,
the nice gentleman that works for the, the station
Presentation team.
Station presentation team.
(Machine beeping)
Wait.
Yeah, yeah. What's that?
Can you hear that?
Can you hear that pigeon?
I can hear a pigeon.
That's what I love about when we come to like, these,
Like remote stations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because there's always like a bit of wildlife.
Yeah, no, I like that.
So, to recap,
Yeah.
Uh, is there a ticket machine?
Yes.
Is there a ticket office?
Yes.
Are there timetables?
Yes.
Are there dot-matrix displays?
Yes.
Is there a clock?
Yes.
Is there a shop?
Yes.
Is there- Are there litter bins?
Yeah, I was just saying,
because I was right there being litter bins.
We saw the man cleaning.
It's time to do the artistic litter bin shot.
This is a new thing we do on Least Used Stations.
It's called "Inside the bin shot".
There's quite a lot,
there's quite a lot of rubbish actually.
There a lot of coffee cups.
Yeah.
Always use reuseble cups, people.
Don't get, don't get disposable ones.
Hold on. So, as an amateur sleuth,
Yes.
There seems to be coffee cups from
different establishments. Where are the shops?
What? I hadn't- What? That's- What, you're right!
We need to go and find these other shops.
Okay.
So I don't know how I missed it earlier,
but there's a pub, there's an Accessorise, a McDonald's,
there's an M&S, uh, there's a WHSmith, there's a Costa,
there's a Nero. Um, it turns out there's actually, one or-
There's a whole balcony that I somehow missed before.
There's a few more shops here.
I dunno! Do you think this might be the most (coughs),
the most shops we've ever had at Least Used Stations?
Do we need to go and count them?
For the official stats?
We need to- I think there might be a toilet.
Do you want to go and see if there's a toilet?
Yes.
Is it, is it quaint, Vicki?
(laughs) Where on the quaint scale is it?
Where on the quaint scale is Waterloo?
I think, I mean because it's so quiet, it sort of
automatically registers on the quaint scale anyway.
I really like the historical bit that we saw upstairs,
so that kind of boosts it up another level.
Yeah.
Um, it's nice!
Yeah, it's a shame that not many people come here.
That not many people use it.
I feel that if there were more train services from here,
Yeah.
Then more- It's a classic case of, you know,
build it and they will come.
Yes, it's,
If they run more trains,
Yes.
Then it would definitely get more passengers.
Yes, exactly, I mean, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
You've said this so many times.
I know.
And they were free.
Uh, so I'm making my way, uh,
just to the end of the platform,
because we can't not do, uh,
Vicki feet measurement.
I've come to the end of the platform.
Uh, so just gonna start the timer, and then I'm gonna be
measuring the platform in Vicki feet.
So, where should we start. Parked in place, and... go.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,
18, 19, 20...
27, 28, 29... 31, 32...
54, 55, 56, 57, 58.
858. I had to move, because the train came in,
so it's not 100% accurate.
Oh, then you've got to go and do it again then.
(sighs)
So, I'm gonna have to update my spreadsheet
when I get back. I'll have to add new columns for like,
pub, and cash machines,
because I don't think any of the least used stations
had those before. So it's good.
It's good that some of these smaller stations do actually
have more facilities than you realise, I think,
I think that's a nice, a nice, I think that's a nice thing.
Right. We've been saying it for the last 20 minutes.
It's definitely tea time. And unbelievably, there's a Pret.
I had no idea there was a Pret here.
We ended the video by coming to Pret.
How was your least used London Waterloo experience?
I just can't believe how quiet.
It's so very quiet.
Yeah. For like a central London station.
I knew it was the least used.
You'd expect there to be more people, wouldn't you?
Yeah.
Just, just hanging around.
Yeah.
Okay. Thanks very much!
And that's our closing shot!