TikToker inspired by viral trainspotter visits and ranks all 272 of London’s Tube stops

A London Tube enthusiast, inspired by the viral sensation Francis Bourgeois, has taken to social media to rank all 272 of the capital’s underground stations, creating a “community” of fellow transport enthusiasts. Tom Rees, a 29-year-old marketing operations manager originally from rural Shropshire and now residing in Islington, was always fascinated by the way the Tube network allows people to “zip around the city”.

After relocating to London in 2017, he embarked on a quest in 2019 to visit every station, capturing the “good, the bad, and the ugly” with his GoPro to form an intricate mental map of the metropolis. In 2023, he transformed his adventures into engaging content for , , and YouTube under the username @vaguely.

He ranks stations and has attracted a following of 50,000 across his channels, with his most popular video racking up over two million views. His top picks for Tube stops are Uxbridge, Chesham, and Canary Wharf, while places like Stonebridge Park and Barking languish at the lower end of his list.

Now venturing beyond the Underground, Tom is exploring mainline stations and discovering hidden treasures such as a light house in Tower Hamlets emitting a 1,000-year-long melody and a Roman bath tucked beneath an office block in Billingsgate. Speaking to PA Real Life, Tom revealed: “It was probably around when Francis Bourgeois was blowing up, so I knew there was an audience for it, and I’d not seen anybody doing a review of these stations with a more subjective take.”

“I couldn’t believe it when my videos started getting views, but there’s a real community of people who follow my videos now.”Despite “not being interested in trains themselves”, Tom is captivated by the London Underground’s ability to transport masses efficiently across the city, contrasting with his childhood in Shropshire where public transport was scarce.

He said: “The idea of just being able to turn up on a platform and be whisked away to a distant corner of this massive city, it was always something that I found very exciting when I visited London growing up.”

After relocating to London in 2017, curiosity led him to explore what lies beyond each tube station, from Chesham to Epping to Upminster.

In 2019, he embarked on an ambitious quest to visit every station, allotting roughly 20 minutes to each locale before proceeding. “I was mostly interested in discovering all these places, the good, the bad, the ugly, and in a broader sense, it’s definitely given me a much better mental map of London,” he explained.

To chronicle his adventures, Tom filmed his experiences with a GoPro, amassing “video proof” of his extensive travels. He humorously admitted: “I was clearly on some sort of ego trip where I thought that someone might ask me about it.”

The footage remained unused on a hard drive, serving no purpose beyond personal documentation, as he confessed: “I had all this footage on a hard drive, and I didn’t do anything with it, I didn’t have any plans for it, it was literally just a record.”

Tom’s quest to visit every London Underground station ended with a whimper rather than a bang at Oval station, which he described as “anticlimactic”. A social media marketing expert by trade, Tom was fascinated by the industry and understood the need to “identify a niche” for success on platforms like .

Inspired to carve out his own space online, he repurposed his extensive footage into engaging and content, adding personal commentary on each station. In April 2023, under the username @vaguely.

Tom began sharing his adventures, posting videos bi-daily until September 2024. He employed a tier system to rank stations, admitting that choosing a favourite would be as difficult as picking a top song because “it changes all the time”.

He explained his criteria: “It’s all gut feeling but if a station hasn’t been looked after very well, or it’s been allowed to get rusty, or the signs are all sun-bleached and stuff like that, that’s not going to help.”

Conversely, he appreciated stations with unique features, saying, “On the flip side, if there’s some sort of novel artwork or architecture going on, that’s all very good stuff.”

He cited Uxbridge station, with its stained glass windows, as an example of top-tier design, comparing it to a cathedral.

A self-professed train enthusiast has shared his varied experiences across London’s Underground, from the idyllic Chesham station in Buckinghamshire with its charming rural approach, to Canary Wharf’s futuristic vibe. He said: “You kind of go winding through fields and hills on the tube train – it’s all very romantic and a contrast to that inner-city bustle. But then you’ve also got Canary Wharf, which is sci-fi and grand Millennium architecture.”

Commenting on the Bakerloo line’s ageing appearance, he mentioned, “the northern leg of the Bakerloo line” often looks “knackered”, revealing a particular aversion to stations like Stonebridge Park and expressing that Barking leaves much to be desired.

His criticisms extended beyond aesthetics as he rated High Green Islington the lowest tier, asserting: “High Green Islington, I gave that an E tier, so the bottom tier, mainly because if you compare it to old pictures of how it looked in Victorian times, for instance, it’s so far removed from that – it’s quite sad now to see how far it’s fallen.”

In summer 2024, his adventures continued in Glasgow, where he explored all 15 subway stations in one afternoon, but found the network a bit wanting, saying: “It’s great that it exists; however, it’s not the nicest in terms of the actual stations, and there’s quite a lot of damp smells underground there,” Furthermore, he holds London’s network in high regard for its pioneering history and station diversity, adding: “I think London’s network stands out because it’s the first, but also because there’s so much variety in the stations.”

While open to exploring other cities, he doesn’t foresee a series similar to the one he created for the London Underground since other systems, like Paris’s, tend to lack the unique attributes London boasts: “I may well visit other cities and do their networks, but I don’t imagine I’d be rushing to do a like-for-like equivalent of my tube series.

“I think in most other cities, even like Paris, most of their stations are homogenous; they’re all quite similar.”

Since wrapping up his video series in September 2024, Tom’s journey as a viral sensation has seen his following skyrocket to over 50,000 enthusiasts on , , and YouTube. His hottest hit—a savvy guide to snagging the cheapest train from the airport to the heart of London—raked in over two million eyeballs since June 2023.

But the social media star hasn’t hit the brakes; he’s now embarked on critiquing London’s railway stations with a quirky twist: scouting an “interesting place” near each one. “It is definitely going to be tricky in some places, but I’ll give it a go,” he declared.

His adventures have already taken him to the offbeat Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse, home to an eerie musical composition set to play for a millennium. Furthermore, he stumbled upon the secrets of the ancient Billingsgate Roman House and Bath, tucked away beneath an ordinary city office building.

Yet, despite his fame, Tom isn’t charting a course towards full-time content creation just yet. He shared candidly, “I would have to be a lot bigger than I am to feel comfortable transitioning into doing it full time.”

What really fuels Tom is the community sprouting from his work—the bonds formed between fans over mutual affection for his content.

“The thing I’m proudest of is the community it’s helped build – there’s people who know each other through liking my tube reviews and my videos, and are now friends.”

This sense of kinship is what lights up his world. “That makes me feel happy.”