Tip for searching Google Images for a particular station

[Douglas G]

As an information specialist, I do a lot of complex searching of databases in my work using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT).

 

I have a tip for searching Google Images for pictures and maps of a particular station that I hope people will find useful.

 

Just substitute your station name for X in the following search strategy, copy and paste it into Google and then choose "Images":

 

"X station" OR (X AND (station OR railway OR train OR line OR platform OR track))

 

As an example:

 

"kegworth station" OR (kegworth AND (station OR railway OR train OR line OR platform OR track))

 

Once you have run the search, you can save the search to your web browser favourites, as Google generates a specific URL for the search.

 

Quite often images of stations are tagged on websites just by the name of the place X, hence the need to combine with other terms that relate to stations and railways. The search strategy works best for smaller stations, as there will be more non-relevant results for big towns (e.g. images of petrol stations and fire stations!).

 

While the combination of the name of the place X and the word "station" in the second part of the search will find "X station", by also having this term itself as the first part of the strategy (the inverted commas are needed), this makes Google put images with this term towards the top of the search results.

 

A further refinement is to add in the names of places that trains went to from the station you are searching for. For example, for my own searches for Dulverton Station I use this search:

 

"dulverton station" OR (dulverton AND (station OR railway OR train OR line OR platform OR track OR barnstaple OR taunton OR exeter OR tiverton))

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=dulverton+AND+(station+OR+railway+OR+train)&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=w6vwU9zMGuTy7AanhYGgAg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAw&biw=1366&bih=600#tbm=isch&q=%22dulverton+station%22+OR+(dulverton+AND+(station+OR+railway+OR+train+OR+line+OR+platform+OR+track+OR+barnstaple+OR+taunton+OR+exeter+OR+tiverton))&*

 

It works really well. There don't seem to have been many more pictures of Dulverton added to websites recently, which is probably going to apply to most closed stations. One thing I have noticed is that Google doesn't seem to access images on some online databases of railway images, so these have to be searched separately.