please empty your brain below

Catford and Catford Bridge are fortunately opposite each other, so the distance quoted is broadly the same as the walk between the two. But don't try it between Ebbsfleet and Northfleet, where the walking distance is almost 3 times that flown by the crow.

Of note is that historically some stations started off as separate establishments, one such being Victoria, which was originally two stations side by side, until a hole was knocked in the wall of the adjacent concourses, I think in the 1920s. To travel between the two would involve a circular journey perhaps via Peckham Rye and Tulse Hill.
Fascinating!

In the final list of pairs, do the italics identify the boroughs, and if so should Battersea be Wandsworth?
Very interesting. And 40 years ago we could have added Broad Street/Liverpool Street to the London pairs list.
The challenge in Catford is to walk unerringly to the station you need without taking note of any helpful signs. Last time there I failed.
It'd be an extremely tedious task to identify them, but given the number of competing lines that were built, I'd guess that there were even closer stations in the past.
Birchgrove to Ty Croes is 17 chains by rail (just under 342 metres). Appreciate that the distances featured use the ‘official’ location but this seems subjective.
This is one of those 'I can't believe you actually did that' posts!!
Speechless!
In my next life I want to be a maptwiddler.
The 'official' locations come from an 'ORR desktop review' (whatever that might mean - someone looking at a map?) - how they relate to any railway industry view as to where (precisely) a station is a matter of conjecture ('a piece of string' length is probably the distance).
Given that even the shortest public platforms on Network Rail are 15m long, stations might be described as 'large' - any measure of distance between them to a precision of less than than 100m should be regarded as an approximation.

Looking at the London figures, what does surprise me a bit is how far apart some 'station complex' members are. ('station complex' - group of stations sometimes regarded as one, indicated by having an 'internal interchange' between them on the London Connections Rail/Tube map)
Broad Street and Liverpool Street back in the day.
Dorchester west and south are pretty close across the market car park

dg writes: In the database, 424m.
The non-reciprocality can be expressed by two mappings. Each station HAS exactly one nearest neighbour. But each station IS the nearest neighbour of n stations, where n can vary between 0 and lots.

The value of "lots" cannot be more than 5, using geometry. It could be 6 only if ties are allowed and the station is situated in the middle of a regular hexagon.
It has always bothered me perhaps more than it should that Catford station is on a bridge, whilst Catford Bridge isn't.

Supplemental mapping thought - is there a "least close closest pair" where the walking transfer time is quicker than any closer pair?
London Bridge stations back in the day.
While the 'official' locations of London Waterloo and London Waterloo East may be 380 metres apart, the ticket gates for the East station are part of the mezzanine level and within what used to be the Headquarters Offices of the terminus.
Also...

The 10 English stations furthest from any other station

1) Malton (27.4km from York)
2) Swindon (20.5km from Kemble)
3) Market Rasen (20.4km from Kirton Lindsey)
4) Spalding (20.2km from Swineshead)
5) Hereford (18.3km from Leominster)
6) Stamford (17.4km from Oakham)
7) Chathill (16.6km from Alnmouth)
8) Leominster (16.2km from Ludlow)
9) Ivybridge (16.1km from Totnes)
10) Appleby (15.9km from Kirkby Stephen)
The 2 former Shotton railway stations in North Wales probably would have been on the list as they were originally 2 separate stations with different names, but they are now considered the same station, albeit with a footpath connection, as per the Wiki article on them.

On the Tube, the shortest platform to platform interchange must be Charring Cross and Embankment on the Northern Line... you barely leave one station platform before passing into the next.
the somewhat arbitrary selection of points from which to measure is really shown with Kings Cross and St Pancras. Even putting aside that by entering the underground station there's two routes that mean not going outside, I reckon the edge of the Kings Cross concourse comes to well under 50m from the outside wall of St Pancras, and that certainly an outside walking route door to door can be under 90m
I know that they are not the closest stations by foot but I have heard that a 280 metres 12 car train can have its front in City Thameslink and its rear in Blackfriars (and vice versa obviously)
It would be interesting to recast some of these lists to only include stations that are step free (ideally with the route between also step free but that would likely require lots of viewing of Google Streetview or similar if not some actual vists). Raising the bar to accessible for visually impaired would also knock a few out.
Of course, of the list (in London) only Rotherhithe to Canada Water is by a direct rail link.

(South Tottenham to Seven Sisters is possible by rail, if only the 0531 Saturdays only Liverpool Street - Enfield Town called at STO you could do it!)
...And the only other one on the under 400m list which is a direct rail link is Birchgrove to Ty Glas. I travelled on the Coryton line a few years back and was amazed by the sheer contrast between the density of stations on the short branch followed by a long gap until central Cardiff.
And of course how many people wanting Charing Cross went to [now] Embankment tube when they should have gone to Trafalgar Square on the Bakerloo or Strand on the Northern, both connected by short tunnel to Charing Cross mainline!
Interesting as to how these are calculated. The St Budeaux pairing would be considered by most locals to be approx. 11m apart, not 124m. As can be seen on streetview, the top of the ramp to the eastbound platform at Ferry Road is just across a not-particularly-wide road from the top of the ramp to Victoria Rd's sole platform.

Wigan (Lancs)? Not for the last 50 years.










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