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Shippea Hill - Least Used Station Cambridgeshire
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2021
- To get to Shippea Hill, you can book cheap Train and Coach tickets using the Trainpal App. Download it here: www.mytrainpal.com/web-pages/...
Download the map of Least Used Stations here: geofftech.co.uk/downloads.html
The ORR Estimates of Station Usage: dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statist...
"They didn't have Mince Pies so I bought Sausage rolls" Aah its Geoff who works out all those online Supermarket Shopping substitutions.
You were great in the film Entrapment 😎😁
ah, so it's an international problem then
Go to Great Eastern Model Railways in Norwich, Anne will sort you out with the best sausage rolls in the land!
Have you seen march station its on the ely to Peterborough line
Good evening Geoff,
Just watched your Shippea Hill video and thought you might like some further info. I was Resident Signalman there from 1984 to 1988 and it's where my Railway career started and lasted 25 years in total. Thete used to be a lot more trains calling there in those days in both directions, even a couple to and ftom London direct...the big cream painted house opposite was indeed once a pub, then it was a children's nursery for a while and now a private residence.
The station many years ago was known as Burnt Fen and there was a film made about it. As your charming lady friend pointed out correctly Shippea Hill is indeed the highest point of the Fens. I have a copy of the gradient map somewhere amongst my personal archive. There also used to be proper station buildings either side, many years before my time and was quite a busy place freight wise, transporting local fruit and vegetables to towns and cities.It was busy during wartime as well due to USA troops being stationed at Mildenhall. With regard to the box being on the "huh", the extension on the rear is what is now holding it up, when I was there it was supported by three huge struts. This was because the surrounding fenland soil is to soft to support anything and boxes in areas like tbese had no foundations but were built on a metal framework raft. The signalling lever frame also helped to keep the box upright. The fields to the rear currently growing carrots used to grow onions for pickleing, came in handy around Christmas time...😉. The car park and yard used to have sidings and during my time there was occupied by a local potatoe and transport baron. Again very handy as he used let me have a free sack of potatoes for unofficially keeping an eye on his trucks when parked up overnight. Halfway between Shippea Hil and Ely there used to be another Signal Box that leaned over more then Shippea does, now long since gone.
I hope you find this interesting.
Thanks for reading,
Take care, Jon Barnes.
Jon .. that's amazing, thanks for taking the time to leave such a wonderful comment! i love that the signal frame helped keep the box upright !! and we have CARROTS CONFIRMED, brilliant. hope we brough back some memories for you! so saff that it just gets one train a day now ...
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for your reply, if there is anything else I can help you with in the Fenland area railway wise just let me know. 🙂👍
Cheers, Jon Barnes.
It is called a hill because before the land was drained, these "hills" were the dry places above the marsh
Also like a lot of the fens it's probably sank down over the years as the ground has dried up.
I love how a ‘Carrot Field’ (yet to be confirmed) is what King’s Cross station is severely lacking 😂
Big allotment
It's lettuces...trust me, I live here.
Ian Cumming was the GBBO guy with the mince pies. We made a banner for his arrival. And yes, I'm married to one of the ladies with the Prosecco, she's happy that you remember her. Apart from the Flirt trains, we get the occasional class 37 and I've seen both Tornado and Flying Scotsman come through our little station. Pop in for a 🍸next time...
My family went that day too. I was quite surprised to see myself in the photo. The mince pies were lovely
I used to live in Ely nearby, we drove by whenever we went to meet my grandparents in King's Llyn. The good old times.
When I was stationed at RAF Mildenhall with the USAF in the 1970’s, Shippea Hill was the closest station to the base. At that time there were trains every 4 hours from about 7:00 am on, the last train from Cambridge was about 10:00 pm. Both RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath had a shuttle bus to the station timed to the train arrivals….
I remember all the times I used the station for the Mildenhall Air Fete during the 1980's whilst a student in Norwich. One time the park and ride bus service failed to show up, and myself and a lucky few got taken to the station in a classic US style school bus, only painted in USAFE colours, with an airman driver who warned us all "hold on tight, I drive like the wind". Wonderful experience.
Any aliens spotted?
I hope you have happy memories of England.
You cover carrots to protect the crop from frost and piegons, also the bird that you saw hovering was a Kestrel.
Kites are _much_ bigger and they only eat carrion so they don't need to hover and dive.
That is why I said it was a Kestrel
I love how somebody at Greater Anglia thought, “Shippea Hill has an average usage of half a customer a day, but we need to make sure they’re socially distancing”, hence the signs saying part of a bench is out of use.
Do half-customers only need to stay 1 meter apart?
If you miss your train, you have to wait 24 hours for the next one. I wouldn't want to be alone for that, so I'd bring somebody with me, just in case.
I'm sure there's a rule in place that those signs have to be put on every bench everywhere, regardless of any other factor. Same reason the unstriped gravel parking lot at the public boat launch ramp in Oxbow, Maine (population:
The crop is lettuces . We farm near shipea hill. Wish I’d of passed on my tractor to get the number up 🚜
Dan wants me to confirm that he's pretty certain it was a kestrel.
And definitely not a kite, which would be _much_ bigger, and which soar looking for carrion, rather than hovering looking for live prey.
and the butterfly at 8:55 is a moth
Definitely a Kestrel.
@@Nastyswimmer Moths are just butterflies with incompetent marketing departments.
@@ZGryphon :D
I actually did make a pilgrimage to shippea hill. It took me three days of walking and I slept in a field near the station to catch the 7 in the morning train.
It's only a three hour walk from Ely
"Like other villages in the Fens that include the word ‘hill’, it appears absolutely flat to the modern eye. Shippea Hill in the southern Fens is another good example. These ‘hills’ would in fact have been low ridges, humps and bumps that would have stayed dry in times of flood or in very wet winters. In one or two instances the word might refer to a sharp corner or ‘heal’ in the configuration of the local drainage"
From the book "The Fens", by Francis Pryor.
When I read this, it sounded like Francis Pryor in my head and that was before I got to the author's name. Weird.
Shippea Puff anyone?
Another random fact, but local to this is manea stonea and nornea - the ea denotes above sea level.
@@skritchesdeath5752 I find that very hard to believe -- do you have any evidence to back it up? It seems very unlikely to me that such a short suffix would denote such a detailed concept as "above sea level", especially since these settlements presumably date from long before surveying was a thing. How would they have even known these places were above sea level? Why would they have cared? What langauge is it?
Also, I can't find Nornea on any map, though there is a Nornea Farm on Nornea Lane, just south-east of Ely.
@@beeble2003 well smart a** when the fen flooded these villages and hamlets were above the water level which is… yep you guessed it, sea level. What evidence? Only speaking to people in all them villages. Many of which have lived in them areas for many many MANY generations. As for Nornea, it shows you aren’t local. Nornea is a hamlet which doesn’t show on maps. Before you try belittling and ridiculing people on social media, try doing research.
I believe that the reason why Shippea Hill was so named was because back in the 40s and 50s Londoners didn’t like the thought that their potatoes came from Burnt Fen, and thought that there was something wrong with the produce from this particular area. The officials from the district decided, in conjunction with the Railways, to change the name from Burnt Fen Station to Shippea Hill and thereby those people in London and other parts of the UK went back to buying produce from this area. Quite why they chose Shippea Hill as the name is a mystery but by a simple name change the farmers in this area benefited greatly and all was well once again. The next village down the line towards Ely is Prickwillow, no railway station there, so farmers took their produce to Shippea Hill. Hope this helps!
I used to be really into tractors, but now I sort of blow hot and cold on them. You could say I'm an ex tractor fan.
Nice.
2:00 I guess they thought "Shippea Slight Rise in Terrain" didn't have the same ring to it.
When the level crossing was photographed again in April 2023 the Google car was stopped by the barriers
Geoff’s version of ‘Potato, Potahto’ is ‘Mince Pie, Sausage Roll’. 😂
i enjoy it.
COME ON ENGLAND! GIVE US A GOAL!
Can confirm 'On the huh' is a proper Norfolk phrase - thank you for reminding me of home!
Eat your dockey
:)
I used to regularly read the electric meter at the station in the late 90s early 00s. Always a treat. It marked the edge of our area as SUFFOLK begins shortly along the Lakenheath Road.it was always so windy even in the height of summer. About 400 yards on the left of the line towards Norwich is the point that all 3 county boundaries converge.
Shippea Hill is a lovely little station, traveled there from Whittlesea to attend a airshow at Lakenheath, they provided a special bus service from the station to the airshow.
Hooray! Fascinating as always, and very jolly to see you both.
When you say tractors surely if a class 37 were to pass by that would count 🤔
Didn’t those three ladies say they made the return journey “a couple of times a year”? So 3 entries + 3 exits x2 = 12 . Maybe they were ALL the passengers in that year?
I think you're onto something here.
We still say "on the huh" here in North Essex. I think Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex (only as far south as Colchester) say it. It's a wonderful phrase.
Lovely to see you back again Victoria.✅
Used Shippea Hill several times in the 80's to get to the Air Fete at RAF Mildenhall - special trains from Cambridge / Peterborough/ Norwich and loads of coaches for onward travel.
Great video Geoff and how it's changed between visits. In 2017 there were 156s & 170s going past for Greater Anglia and now it is all 755 FLIRTS for Greater Anglia. Anyway keep up the good work Geoff and it's great to see more Least Used Station videos
Glad you chose a warm day! 😀 really good to have you both out and about again 👍🏻
I drive across that level crossing almost every day when I'm doing my deliveries, wish I had known you were coming to visit! The covered veg will not be potatoes, might be carrots though, I'll tell you in a few weeks when they uncover them!
I had to see this again. These videos always make me feel better when I've been down! Love 'em!
Good to see the Dynamic Duo back in action (action not Acton).
SO good to hear this music again!!! (The hovering bird was a kestrel, btw)
Agree the bird was likely a Kestrel. With only saturday with return, the Prosecco Ladies will be limited on their opportunities for jaunts to the city, which kind of makes me sad.
My mother used to live in Brandon. I always wondered if the train would stop at Shippea Hill when I went to visit her. It actually did once. There used to be a narrow boat standing on blocks on the land next to the down platform.
I remember that when I was living and working in East Anglia in 1989, I went past Shippea Hill Station, which back then, had level crossing gates, which were operated by a level crossing keeper.
There was also a pub which was within a stone's throw of the station.
It looked to me as though the pub sadly no longer exists
Fantastic video, always great chemistry and so entertaining.
When the line to Kings Lynn was being electrified, Shippea Hill was the ‘hub’ for replacement bus transport . At times lots of activity with - even - double deck buses around. Transfers from Ely on those vomit inducing fen roads!
Geoff's channel music is always a bop!
10:22 it's a bitd from Cyberpunk 2077
Shout out to the 2017 Shippea Hill massive! 😃
That's possibly the first really great product I've seen on a TH-cam video! Pity I don't live in the UK!
I have had a drink in the Railway Tavern, back when it was a pub in the 1980s. The longe had sofas so it was like being in somebodies front room. And when I drive to Shippea Hill I nearly always get stuck behind a tractor. Lovely to see “on the huh” used on TH-cam.
Love you guys. Thanks a million.
I think that Shippea Hill station was where I used to get a train to when traveling to the Mildenhall Air Show in the 1980s.... must have been the only occasion that there were many people travelling to and from the station to catch busses that were laid on to take you to the airfield
Hi Geoff, enjoy your video's. Watching Shhippea Station brings back memories of the early 80s when I use to drive from Skegness to Mildenhall daily delivering clean laundry to the American airbase and passed it twice a day
Mukden hall just down the road yes! 👍
@@geofftech2 I'd just like to note that, having just read a book about the Mukden Incident (Manchuria, 1931), I found the mental image arising from that autocorrect quite epic. Just the idea of the Imperial Japanese Army staging a fake terrorist bombing on the rail line at Shippea Hill to justify their invasion of the Fenlands...
We just now got cooler weather here in the Pacific Northwest. Our predicted high is 78° F (25.6° C) today as opposed to 115° F (46.1°C) this last Monday in Portland.
@@Dave_Sissonoh yea, it's Winter down there...😬
Trainpal did not work from scarborough to hartlepool return it still cheaper split tickets and only change once at York on Trainpal need change twice and cost lot more
Shippea Hill is convenient for a nearby pumping museum about 3 miles up the road
Sainsbury's sell mince pies all year round ;)
I really do enjoy the new opening titles, the matching up to the music is ace
Thanks for the link for the new app and great to see you both on a video
Used to live just down the road from Shippea Hill, in Sedge Fen. It’s so middle of nowhere, that both our road name and village name were “Sedge Fen.”
It looks peaceful, I love it.
Thanks for posting the video 👍
So if i want to go from Northampton to Shippea Hill i need to leave Northampton on Friday and travel to London Euston, take the tube to Liverpool St and catch a train from there to Norwich. Stay in Norwich Friday night and then get a train from Norwich to Shippea Hill arriving at 16:13pm 😳
i do alot of walking and often walk 26 miles which takes me 6 hours. So probably easier and quicker if i just walk to Shippea Hill as its only 65 miles away 😂 😂 😂
Thanks once again and for the TrainPal App info 👍 👍
Ah, this took me back! When I worked in display for a shoe company (a lifetime ago now!) I frequently travelled from Norwich to Cambridge on the first train of the day, the 6:28 out of Norwich, and Shippea Hill, which isn't far from Cambridge, was the point where I started to wake up! 😆 And I remember thinking the same: where's the hill? And why does anyone want to get off in the middle of nowhere? 🙂
Ooooo I love the train app plug Geoff. Real smooth 😂
The least used Help Point as well
POLESWORTH
The dynamic duo are back.👌
Loving the new opening titles 👍👍👍
Geoff, you’re going to have to come back down to Devon for the least used station. As Sampford Courtney isn’t reopening as part of the reinstated Dartmoor line to Okehampton.
Haha, funnily coincides with my waiting list mail from Cambridge; however, glad I got offers from Oxford and UCL. I would love to take up a least used station visit once in the UK.
Congratulations! Medicine? You didn't used to be able to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, otherwise.
Whaaaaat if I had known you were there, I would have bought cakes n stuff 😁 I live down in Soham - the station of which will reopen soon and I hope you will be doing a video for 😁
A place with some serious railway history too.👍
@@2H80vids yes, the WW2 munitions explosion a big one.
Another Soham resident here too!
Just fields and fields for miles
It’s good the help point told you about the next train
You both make a great team!
My first visit to Shippea Hill today, so I just rewatched this. The station’s basically the same, but all the signage has been replaced (including the double arrow totem).
The Shippea Hiil Mountain Rescue Team will be offended
Please don’t give The Tim Traveller any ideas.
The Pidley Mountain Rescue Team “aim to improve the quality of life and independence of disabled and disadvantaged people within Huntingdonshire allowing them the same opportunities and freedom as everyone else.”
You may joke about a Mountain Rescue Team. I know somebody who was Rescued by the Mountain Rescue or Lowland Rescue service. Since they were down a Canal tow path and the Ambulance could not get there. So they are needed if you end up off the road network
@@hublanderuk I think you missed the point: it’s a flat fenland
@@hoof2001 I know what the fenland is like. You can see how big the hill is here. E.g. the height of the railway line above the rest of the land. Also it was suppose to be mid summer. 😄
brilliant ive recently started to use trainpal so far ive used them to travel from Reading to Coventry for £30 spliting my ticket at Banbury and last week i used trainpal from Reading to Solihull for £30 again splitting my tickets at Banbury im now trying to book Reading to Manchester for September
I does make me wonder how many more passenger Shippea Hill would get if more trains stopped there considering its in the middle of nowhere!
past via the station and stoped at it but never got out so it is nice to see
Another least used station! Yeah! I love this kind of videos, and plz do least used station in whole of Britain 2020-2021?
King's Cross is severely lacking in carrots, that made me laugh more than it should've done! 😂
Shippea Hill is my local station and used to have more trains stopping at it back in the 80s and 90s. Still don’t understand why it now only has one train stopping at it Monday to Friday going towards Norwich ? The house did use to be a pub back in the 80s.
It's one train per day, because they don't want you to use the trains.
You need to get local people, to demand your local council and MP demands more trains, otherwise nothing will change.
It's to meet service requirements as listed in the franchise agreement. It's easier to do that than to legally close the station which is a time consuming and expensive process.
Another great least used, always entertaining.
"Report if you see something not right"
Yeah, the lack of trains.
Thanks for the code just been catching up with videos come in handy for blackpool
I love a good post-credits scene!
Woohoo! It’s always a great day when a new Least Used Station video is released!
I haven't even watched it and I've already 'liked' it!
Excellent film. Is there a "number of tractors over a level crossing" series of videos in the offing?
#PedantryCorner... the butterfly was a moth! A Cinnabar to be precise... which, suitably, is in Greater Anglia colours! ;-)
Great video visited there in 2019 sausage rolls from a petrol station !!result!
The bird was a kestrel
A kestrel doing what it does best, hover.... Geoff got it with the first take... Geoff should direct movies...
Maybe, back in the time of Hereward the Wake, the land around was swamp, and Shippea Hill was a dry area which just nudged up out of the swamp by a foot or so.
I was once stranded at shippea hill. Bridge was hit further up the track. We had to all call taxis. And it was very cold and wet. Late night for all.
I apologise for the weather, it was apparently nice and sunny the day before. The bad weather has followed me around the country this year and you've turned up at Shippea Hill the day after I got home (2 stops further along the line) from 4 miserable weeks in Scotland 👍
Woohoo! My (joint) nearest least used. One day I must work out a way to do this one.
I went to shippea Hill the other week! Was going to Mildenhall to see air force one and passed through accidentally!
So sorry to hear that you two spent Summer Solstice which turned out to be rainy, windy and glum.
Why an earth would you travel from a station that you can’t return to on the same day? You do wonder how the operator is allowed to get away with that sort of bonkers timetabling
I am haunted by the fact that doesn't seem to be addressed.
It's called a "Parliamentary Service". (Sometimes called a "ghost train".)
You need to get an act of Parliament to close a station, like Shippea Hill, and stopping all the trains there, would slow down the long distance trains.
So, the government, the Office of Road and Rail, Network Rail and the train operating companies all collude in the farce of technically keeping stations open, but intentionally making the service so awful, that local people do not demand to have four stopping trains per hour, in the rush hour.
The result of the shoddy service is that these stations have ORR stats that "prove" that they are not very popular with local people.
However, we are getting more modern trains, in certain parts of the country, and modern trains can accelerate and break more quickly.
So, I hope that when the new Great British Railways thing kicks in, they evaluate stations like Shippea Hill and - if it is possible to operate a full-day request stop service, I think they should demand that the local operator does that.
@@DavidShepheard I understand what you said, but that's just dumb. Make it so no one wants to use the station since they can't go both ways except on Saturday.
@@cyberi4a but who would use the station? Seems to be nothing but farms around the station, no locals living nearby and not any attractions either. The station was probably built to satisfy a landowner or built to serve a development that never came so it has no purpose
@@declancotter722 I guess originally it was more for agriculture (all those farms produce goods that need to go to factories and big cities) not people. Although the two airbases did mean it was quite busy for a time in the 60s - Lakenheath is about a mile and a half away. The Lakenheath station has an even worse service - request stop on Sundays only. If you are in Lakenheath (the village) then Brandon (about a couple of miles away) is the station that actually gets a useful service.
4:51 By Grabthar’s hammer, what a savings!
Welcome back to Cambridgeshire!
Excellent video. Loved it.
Have you done stations that never were? Just up the road from us in Lower Stondon is Station Road. A station was planned, so Station Road was built to attract the commuters, but then the station was never built. Looking at the satellite images, eg Google Maps, you can see that there never was a railway line.
It's ironic. While you were freezing in Shippea Hill, I was on an island in the arctic circle and it was sunny and quite hot.
The weather was Graham. Graham Gloomy.
Should've brought out the OS maps to check the elevation! :D
They're not paul and Rebbecca 😂😂
Wow, Least Used station and Request stop. Great job @Geoff Marshall
My daily commute used to take me over that level crossing. How I hated it on the way home it I timed in wrong.