'I just wanted to know where people came from'

Elliott Badger has worked at Northampton railway station for 18 years

A railway worker who is aiming to collect train tickets to a station from every stop in the UK has said he was "just curious to know where people come from".

Elliott Badger started the All Aboard to Northampton project in 2020 and he now has 2,100 tickets – about 600 short of the total needed.

Mr Badger said he sifted through thousands of tickets a day in the hope of filling the remaining gaps.

"If it ever gets full," he said, “at least it will be a legacy that will outlive me."

Mr Badger, who works for London Northwestern Railway, said: "One day we just took a load of tickets out of the ticket barriers and had a look through, just to see where people came from – and now it's nine years later.

"I just kept going and kept going and, before you know it, I've done it for years."

The tickets are displayed in alphabetical order on a board at the station, and spaces have been left for each of the missing stops.

The vast majority of missing tickets would be from "tiny little stations in the Welsh mountains or in the Scottish mountains, or right out in the middle of nowhere," he said.

Elliott Badger has had to make space for new stations on the boards

In 2021, the project was recognised by the Railway Heritage Designation Advisory Board.

It has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people online after commuter Emily Turner snapped it and posted it on social media.

"I really like maps and the way things are connected and joined together, and I really love that idea of just understanding where different people were coming from to get to Northampton," she said.

Carol Puckett went to see the wall of train tickets after spotting them on social media

Station user Carol Puckett was one of those who discovered the project via social media.

"We saw it on Twitter and we wanted to see it when we came here," she said.

"Someone has already been here from Taunton... we will have to come from somewhere else next time."

White pieces of paper fill in the gaps where there are no tickets for the missing departure stations