Tube superfan ranks all 272 London Underground stations and reveals the best

A Tube lover spent countless hours visiting all London Underground stations to rank the ‘the good, the bad and the ugly.’

Some stations fared better than others when Tube enthusiast Tom Rees travelled through the TfL network armed with a GoPro camera.

Canary Wharf ranked among his favourite stations thank so its ‘sci-fi’ architecture, while he found Barking station ‘quite a miserable place.’

Originally from rural Shropshire, the 29-year-old marketing operations manager was drawn to the Tube because of Londoners’ ability to ‘zip around the city.’

He explained why the Tube has captivated him: ‘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.’

His fascination with the mass transportation system grew since moving to Islington, north London, in 2017.

The following year, he set on the mammoth task of ‘doing a review of these stations with a more subjective take.’

He spent around 20 minutes at each station, including those at the end of each line such as Chesham at the end of the Metropolitan line in zone 9, Epping on the Central line and Upminster along the District line.

In 2023 after filming hours of footage of the ‘good, the bad and the ugly,’ Tom uploaded his footage into TikTok, Instagram and YouTube for everyone to see, saying he ‘couldn’t believe it when my videos started getting views.’

‘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.

Best and worst Tube stations

Tom revealed that his favourite Tube stops include Uxbridge, Chesham and Canary Wharf, while his less favourites are Stonebridge Park and Barking.

He said the northern leg of the Bakerloo line often looks ‘knackered.’

The vlogger particularly disliked Stonebridge Park while Barking felt ‘quite a miserable place.’

However, picking just one favourite station would be like choosing a favourite song as it ‘changes all the time,’ Tom said.

To rank the stations from best to worst, Tom used a tier system based on a ‘gut feeling’ and the general vibe of a station.

Tom explained: ‘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.

‘On the flip side, if there’s some sort of novel artwork or architecture going on, that’s all very good stuff.

‘Examples that I do really like, and are top-tier, would be something like Uxbridge, which has stained glass windows, I think I probably likened it to a cathedral.

‘A different sort of station might be something like Chesham, the very furthest station on the whole tube network in Buckinghamshire.

‘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.’

At the other end of the list are the ‘bottom tier’ stations such as High Green Islington.

He ranked it ‘E 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.’

He continues to explore the London mainline stations – and he has uncovered hidden details such as the Trinity Buoy Lighthouse in east London playing a 1,000-year-long song since 1999 and a Roman bath under an office block in Billingsgate.

Now the 50,000 followers across his channels under the handle vaguely.mundane feel like a community, Tom said.

The 161-year-old London Underground network continues to have its fans like Tom.

An artist from London is on a mission to paint every single Tube station on the vast TfL network, while a map enthusiast Max Roberts has created a circular version of the iconic Tube map, saying it is less cluttered than the official version.

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