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Ugly railway stations

Started by Gurke and Hare, September 18, 2017, 08:28:08 PM

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Gurke and Hare

Quote from: shiftwork2 on September 18, 2017, 04:53:11 PM
There are less prepossessing train stations than Plymouth.  Southampton looks like Threads after the halfway point and Sunderland, well Satan is clearly on his way back to Earth at breakneck speed.

I've just checked this out on Google Streetview, and I'm not having it. Southampton (I'm assuming you're talking about Southampton Central) is a lovely bit of modernism, with a pleasingly nautical air to reflect its maritime location. Sunderland is hardly even a building in its own right, just part of a bog standard shopping centre by the look of it, but it does have the world's premier electronic cigarettes and e-liquid shop next to it.

thenoise

Sutherland is delightfully dated looking.  It was quite surprising to swing the camera around and see Santander, I was rather expecting to see Woolies or C&A.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

#2
I should let Serge in here, but anyway, Derby is one of the emblems of cultural vandalism:




Clearly a Magistrate's court someone put the wrong label on. The interior is more like a decommissioned leisure centre.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

In comparison, Hull and Sheffield got more tasteful re-designs that kept the glamorous Victorian facades while adding, yes, lots of glass.

Darlington's is a well-preserved beauty, more or less the first and only good thing I think about when Darlington comes to mind.


Cuellar

Checkout this beautiful big Rotterdam bastard



Shoulders?-Stomach!

Rotterdam's has a very good exterior, impressively mordern but not quite as well organised and sign posted as I'd have liked.

Now, how about this for a condemned AIDS shithole: Fort William train station




Welcome to the Highlands, damp, dolour and decay

Cuellar

Aren't 99% of all train stations ugly?

Beautiful Egham!


Shoulders?-Stomach!



Urgh, like being shrunk into the boot grooves of a paedophile mountaineer.

Shoulders?-Stomach!



Not sure if this has been demolished yet but I think you used to be able to by razorblades from the vending machines

Gulftastic

South Shields Metro Station is awful, as are most of the stations on that service, I suspect. We only really see this one and the Newcastle one on our trips up there.


Gulftastic

They've done loads inside Leeds Station, but the main entrance remains resolutely crap.



The far more recently built southern entrance is nice, though


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Leeds is a functionally effective but quite ugly station. Don't like the main entrance bit or the metal metal metal everywhere on the platforms. It's oppressive.

Apart from the Queens Hotel entrance which leads into a beautiful sweeping art deco thing redolent of Grand Central and some of the best inter-war era stations:



Shoulders?-Stomach!



Aw look everyone we're Swindon, we're in the space age!



No.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Southampton




Fuck sake if you ever wanted a final push to topping yourself you'd get a one way there.


Gulftastic

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 18, 2017, 09:15:02 PM


Apart from the Queens Hotel entrance which leads into a beautiful sweeping art deco thing redolent of Grand Central and some of the best inter-war era stations:



That is one of the great reborn bits of the city. When I was a kid, it was a long empty corridor, with a dark car park down one side.

shiftwork2

Looks like I performed an inadvertent backdoor job on Southampton Central.  Sorry.  It's nice around the front isn't it, the ocean liner theme has shades of the Art Deco tube stations.  This is what I meant (and this isn't that bad either - I think it's really the concrete and weird open space that greets you as you emerge, and continues, and continues).  Not a fan of Southampton.

Totally standing by Sunderland.  Foetid.

Reading, good shout.  That bit of it still features all your favourite nineties food court franchises including a Burger King preserved from 1993.  There is a shiny new bit though for Crossrail, or the Elizabeth Line as it will be known by the serfs and supplicants.

Rev

That photo in the other thread is mainly not of the tiny Plymouth train station, but the ugly as fuck tower block behind it.  Watford Junction pulls the same move - nondescript station, but hulking red arsehole of a thing leering up behind it, meaning that the two blur together.  Both Plymouth and Watford stations would be fine, they just fell in with a bad crowd.

Shoulders?-Stomach!



They appear to have built a railway line through this 1980s era sports hall in Frome

Zetetic

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 18, 2017, 09:10:26 PM
Reading (Old)

Not sure if this has been demolished yet but I think you used to be able to by razorblades from the vending machines

I actually think in some ways the old Reading station is nicer than the new one - the new one is a dull, soul-less post-aesthetic kind of thing with the most easily perceived design emphasis being on easy access to mediocre chain shops.

The old bit isn't beautiful (and it hasn't been demolished, other than the walkway to the car park), but it reveals its own structure and was airy inside for no reason other than it was more pleasant. As is usually the way these things go, it suffered from not being maintained properly once it seemed likely that it'd be replaced.

Zetetic

Swindon's isn't terribly interesting, but it benefits from the comparison with the surrounding area.

It used to have a sensory garden, and they replaced it with a police hut. Brexit Britain.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Guildford. What is it with these oblongs of Major-era decay? There's a special artlessness to them



I know it's a poor quality image but some of that looks as if it was out on PsOne.

greencalx

I always though Coventry was a bit of a shitter, but now I look at it again (especially in the context of this thread), I'm a little aroused.


MoonDust


Shoulders?-Stomach!





Misty watercolour memories... of the SEC

Shoulders?-Stomach!


Cuellar

Thinking of places that are probably bleak I naturally thought of Newport. What the fuck is this?!


Gulftastic

Quote from: Cuellar on September 18, 2017, 09:45:41 PM
Thinking of places that are probably bleak I naturally thought of Newport. What the fuck is this?!


This?


Zetetic

I'm not sure it's terribly pretty from the outside, and the bridge could do with feeling a little less like you're underground, but it's reasonably nice inside. It's a shame that the old bit (including the toilets) feels a bit abandoned.

(There are bigger problems in that bit of Newport, like the massive car park over the road and the slightly alienated Council services centre. The real problem with the rail station is that it's a little bit too far out of the centre now.)