There are two BR stations which share their name with different stations on the London Underground. They are Redbridge (Hampshire) and Preston Road (Lancs.).
Two stations can be added to make a third, ie Hayes (Kent) plus Harlington (Beds.) equal Hayes and Harlington (Middx.)
The longest gap between two stations is 25 miles, between Carstairs and Lockerbie in Scotland's Borders region.

Thanks for that satguru. I was prompted to find out some other facts as well.

The longest station platform in England is at Gloucester. At 602.6 metres long, it is about six times longer than a football pitch.

The longest station seat in the world is at Scarborough station. It is 139 metres long.

The longest railway tunnel in Britain is the Severn Tunnel. It is over 7 km (about 4 ½ miles) long and would take you over two hours to walk.

Another interesting fact (but not in Britain)

Indian Rail stations:
The longest name is 'Srivenkatanarasimhrajuwaripeta'
The shortest name is 'Ib'

Indian Railway is the largest employer in the world with 1,646,704 employees. (Fancy being the Paymaster!)

... and in South Australia

On the opening of the Adelaide - Aldgate railway on the 14th March 1883, 200 guests missed the official cermonies [sic] at Mt Lofty after being left behind at Blackwood station. While many guests were escaping the confines of the carriages to stretch thier [sic] legs and relieve themselves, the train steamed onto Mt Lofty, stranding the infuriated guests.

Lots of other interesting Indian Railway facts can be found at http://indianarmy.nic.in/arfact1.html English source: http://www.trakkies.com/funzone/fun_facts.html
South Australian source: http://www.freewebs.com/trainz-sa/nuetral/facts.html

Here's a picture of the signboard at Srivenkatanarasimharajuwaripeta; courtesy http://www.irfca.org : http://irfca.org/pix/stations/svnrvp.jpg (unfortunately the station seems to be so remote that the name isn't even written in English)

(By the way, I am a real Indian Railways-buff!)

I was never that interested in railways myself until I watched a couple of programs about them.One was "Great Railway Journeys Of The World"I believe or close to that,the other was about the Indian rail system.The love and care that the Indian rail workers gave the old steam trains was enchanting to see.The sadness the workers showed when the steam trains were taken from service was very moving,but the steam train festivals and the sort of decorating and polishing that leads up to them was amazing.

There's more (I think). Try Manchester Picadilly and Manchester Victoria. Picadilly and Victoria both appear in London stations, to my knowledge.

Aha- at last I've found a subject that people like! Therefore, I will add: The most platforms on one UK station are Waterloo (23 I think), the busiest station for passing traffic is Clapham Junction (accurate in 1980, at least), and finally, though it is a massive station, Birmingham New Street has no non-passenger toilets (accurate in 1988, I had to search in vain). Brussels Midi claims to have toilets, but I could not find them and despite a basic grasp of French, no enquiries were greeted with an answer.

Re the BR/LT station names, that's cheating, Silverginger, the station has to be the whole name not just a part of it. Manchester (Piccadilly) is the proper name, and the LT stop is Piccadilly Circus. Otherwise you could find hundreds- try 'Park' (in Lancs.) for a start- that will take some time!

There is another station which shares it's name with one on the London Underground: "Waterloo" in Crosby, a suburb of Liverpool.

There are many joint ones, for instance also Queens Park, in Glasgow. But they are also joint BR/underground stations in their London versions. Only Preston Road and Redbridge are only on one or the other, but Monument counts really as well as it was on BR until taken over by the Newcastle Metro.

Brain of Britain once had a quiz on joint Underground/Paris Metro stations- there are quite a few!

It's a fair cop mate

That's OK, I suspect I didn't explain my point clearly enough to begin with as usual...

Never mind

While on the subject of railway station facts. Around 2000 of them were closed in the late 60's after Dr. Beeching made his report on cost effectiveness. Many miles of track was lost. A big mistake in retrospect. I think keeping the network more or less as it was would have saved alot of today's road traffic congestion. No real chance of re-opening any of it. Much of the land taken up by railway lines had houses built on it.

Satguru, by a strange chance a man who works for the company that provides our office security (yes, I'm working late) used to be one of the managers at New Street station. I thought of your uncomfortable experience:

"Birmingham New Street has no non-passenger toilets (accurate in 1988, I had to search in vain)"

and asked him about it.

In his day (1980s/1990s) the ticket barriers were rigidly enforced (these days this happens only occasionally during random purges on fare dodgers or when there's a security alert, so you won't have unresolved bladder issues if you visit again!). At that time (as now) a large proportion of passengers travelling through Birmingham are simply changing trains, and (unlike now) these poor souls couldn't leave the station, so they had to build toilets on the "inside" of the barriers for these transit passengers.

They didn't build duplicate facilities on the outside of the barrier though, purely for cost reasons. He thinks they got away with doing that because the station was being built at the same time as the Pallasades shopping centre (which is above it) and that of course has all the requisite facilities effectively under the same roof.

Interestingly (well, Ok, maybe that's exaggerating), although the station concourse has been enlarged repeatedly in the last few years, and now includes all the usual retail outlets, travel centres and coffee bars there should be in a station that has more than 30 million passengers a year, they still haven't installed any additional toilets or washrooms.

Unfortunately Oleg and Stew's depressingly representative information gives the impression (justified?) that Britain's rail system, and attitude to business and progress, are possibly the most short-sighted and confrontational on earth.

As Stew will know as well, the changes in the legal system are probably among the slowest on earth, you need committees, judges, civil servants, preliminary hearings, reports, lobbying, pressure groups, objections etc., just to decide whether to change any administrative detail whether on the large scale of pub opening, public radio transmission, Sunday trading or small scale like local road improvements, where houses have been bought and frequently demolished in advance but no plans to carry them out, finance or approval have ever been given for the actual road improvements (eg half my local North Circular Road).

I know I've strayed well away from station trivia, but the sad fact is that our railway management reflects exactly the whole British way of running the country, pinching pennies, reducing services and delaying decisions indefinitely while vast areas of land (as mentioned above) lie derelict as a direct result.

Do any other countries have similar tales to tell or are we really one of the worst-run infrastructures oin the world?