Ugly railway stations

[Gulftastic]

There's a nice railway stations thread btw

giz a link, Shoulders, there's a good chap. My search proved fruitless, but I knew one existed.

[Captain Crunch]

Here it is:

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,62502.0.html

[Gulftastic]

Here it is:

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,62502.0.html

Cheers Cap!

[hummingofevil]

I quite like Wrexham General but this is what greets you if you continue that one last stop into the town itself. Wrexham Central. Welcome to Wrexham.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wrexham_Central_station_(2).JPG

[Rev+]

I think we need Garston in here, not exactly for ugliness, just for its absolute lack of effort.



That's the whole thing, a single track running through a housing estate.  The hedges on the right are the bottom of peoples' gardens, and if you're standing on the platform, looking to the left will put you at eye-level with some bloke eating his dinner through his living room window.  The information board as you enter helpfully advises that the ticket office opening times are 'this station has no ticket office'.

[Blumf]

Dudley Port

What was:



What is:



Trapped between the lines on a windswept platform, with high-speed intercity services blowing past. The absolute minimum you could call functional.

[ToneLa]

Rock Ferry is quite the station. Just screams "bleak". Merseyrail are pretty good and have given it actual facilities of some description mind. Bins, a ticket office. It's mainly the surroundings. Plus, on the approach to Liverpool, at one point the track is higher than ground level, leading me to wonder why exactly three consecutive back gardens have trampolines

The view from outside says it all. Plus it's named for a Duffy album, or a vessel that would sink! Note, this photo has been colourised

[bim sherman shirts]

I think we need Garston in here, not exactly for ugliness, just for its absolute lack of effort.

Similar to Kilmaurs railway station. You pass under a bridge bearing a large Strathclyde Transport sign, climb a lengthy ramp/flight of stairs up a steep embankment to be greeted by the sight of... absolutely bugger all.



The coastal (Irvine/Troon/Prestwick/Ayr etc) Ayrshire stations are still very picturesque and well preserved, but the inland ones are complete nonentities. Apart from Kilmarnock, which is very pretty structurally but they try to disguise that as much as possible for some reason.

[Icehaven]

Has Coventry been given a mention yet?

Edit: page 1, naturally

Had a big makeover which was completed last year though, and now looks...exactly the same only with Welcome To Coventry scribbled over it. And they've taken the cash machines inside away too, cheers.

[thenoise]

Would it hurt to include the word 'sorry' somewhere?

[Icehaven]

This is total pedantry too but...If they mean Welcome to Coventry as in the railway station rather than the city (which I'm presuming they do as anyone arriving would be going away from the station and have to do a full 180 to see the message) then it's in the wrong place.
The majority (I'd say probably the vast majority, but I don't have the exact stats to hand) of people arriving at the station go in though the main pedestrian entrance, which in the photo I posted is to the left and round the corner (and it does say it there too, granted). The doors underneath where it says 'Welcome to Coventry' in the pic are largely used by people leaving the station who either want a taxi or are going to the bus stops to the left, so even they bothered turning round to see it, and why wouldn't they, they're actually leaving the station so hardly need welcoming to it. It's make more sense for that writing to be on exactly the other side of the glass and mean 'Welcome to Coventry (as in the city), but then it'd look crap from outside. As always in Coventry, there is no right answer.

[thenoise]

It's intended for people who arrive at the city, exit the station, then immediately turn around in regret.  Which is why it needs a 'sorry' afterwards.

[A Hat Like That]

Dudley Port

What was:



What is:



Trapped between the lines on a windswept platform, with high-speed intercity services blowing past. The absolute minimum you could call functional.

oh yes

put all my west mids stations here plz

[The Culture Bunker]

I'm going to rep for my hometown by nominating Whitehaven's ugly bungalow from hell design:



The view heading North out of the station has a kind of bleakness that seems like it should be in some film of a lone drifter leaving town after sorting out the local thugs, looking all windswept and moody as he tells the female lead why he can't stick around.



In the distant past, it did actually look a bit more happening, with four platforms in use compared to the current two (of which one is very rarely in use).

[Sebastian Cobb]

These featureless stations are pretty common on provincial lines.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Some nice semaphore signalling there. The sign of a lightly used branch line.

[The Culture Bunker]

These featureless stations are pretty common on provincial lines.

True. Whitehaven is a town of about 25,000 people, although the station is hidden away at the North end of town - and there is a housing estate on top of those cliffs on the right, just out of shot.

Some nice semaphore signalling there. The sign of a lightly used branch line.

Couple of trains an hour is the peak, I think. Not sure how much non-passenger traffic passes through to Sellafield, but even when I was a kid in the 80s, you had plenty of coal wagons going through along with tankers for the nearby chemical works.

Heading South, the line is mainly single track to Sellafield and going North, a fair bit up to Workington is single too due to the lack of space between the sea and the cliffs.

[Ferris]

These featureless stations are pretty common on provincial lines.

Agree with this - the absence of stuff may well be bleak, but it's not necessarily actively ugly. If you get stuck on a slow commuter train between 2 cities, every station is essentially the same featureless strip of platform with a bench and semi-opaque shelter.

For really ugly, you have to look to a station that was intentionally designed to be something, but comically dated or poorly conceived/executed. Eastern bloc countries and mid-size provincial towns seem to be winners for this type of stuff.

How about this effort in Budapest?



Moscow's Sheremtyevo (sp?) airport is also impressively hideous. I remember being amazed at how awful it looks, and that was after a few weeks behind the iron curtain so it was really a cut above (/below).

[Sebastian Cobb]

Agree with this - the absence of stuff may well be bleak, but it's not necessarily actively ugly. If you get stuck on a slow commuter train between 2 cities, every station is essentially the same featureless strip of platform with a bench and semi-opaque shelter.

More depressing than this, I find are the remote ones where they still have reasonably sized station buildings that are closed up and borded up. A testament to services they used to provide.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I mentioned this upthread but please try to avoid nothingy provincial stations where it's just a sign and a shelter, unless the surrounding area is outstandingly ugly, such as Allens West.

[PlanktonSideburns]

has there ever been a nice parkway?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Speaking of formerly impressive, now sad, the badly located and mainly sidelined Lviv bus station



The mashrutkas still give me the place a full Societ impression and seemingly 1 in 15 cars is a Lada

[buttgammon]

Rock Ferry is quite the station. Just screams "bleak". Merseyrail are pretty good and have given it actual facilities of some description mind. Bins, a ticket office. It's mainly the surroundings. Plus, on the approach to Liverpool, at one point the track is higher than ground level, leading me to wonder why exactly three consecutive back gardens have trampolines

The view from outside says it all. Plus it's named for a Duffy album, or a vessel that would sink! Note, this photo has been colourised

The Wirral Line varies from quite pleasant to quite grim, but the section around Rock Ferry was always my least favourite bit. It also has the dubious honour of being a place I was repeatedly stranded in while waiting for a rail replacement bus because of bad weather or technical problems.

[The Culture Bunker]

I mentioned this upthread but please try to avoid nothingy provincial stations where it's just a sign and a shelter, unless the surrounding area is outstandingly ugly, such as Allens West.

I'm not sure if this is a referral to the pics I posted, though if so I'd argue that I did include the horrid bungalow station building and also a lament to how it used to be a bustling station for passengers and industry. Part of the ugliness is the sadness of what once was - with extra pathos coming from it being the place I grew up (and I still use the station about four times I year for my twice-yearly trips back there).

[buzby]

Rock Ferry is quite the station. Just screams "bleak". Merseyrail are pretty good and have given it actual facilities of some description mind. Bins, a ticket office. It's mainly the surroundings. Plus, on the approach to Liverpool, at one point the track is higher than ground level, leading me to wonder why exactly three consecutive back gardens have trampolines

The view from outside says it all. Plus it's named for a Duffy album, or a vessel that would sink! Note, this photo has been colourised

Rock Ferry station has at least still got one of the original platform buildings and the canopy ironwork still in place (though it's been reclad with horrible modern corrugated steel)), which is a rarity in Merseyrail. It used to be an important mainline station and interchange between the Mersey Railway and the Birkenhead Joint Railway mainline into Birkenhead Woodside, which was built by the GWR to bring passengers and goods to the Mersey (as it had no access on the Liverpool side of the river). Unfortunately changes in the status of the line have seen the station's status diminish progressively since the 60s so now it's basically just a local through station for trains to Chester and Liverpool.

The Mersey Railway trains terminated in the two bay platforms on the western end of the Bedford Rd. bridge and there were originally 4 platforms to serve the four tracks of the BJR into Woodside (and the line into the Birkenhead Docks railway system). The idea was that passengers to and from Liverpool would change between the Mersey Railway trains and the mainline trains to Chester, West Kirkby (via the line that is now the Wirral Way footpath from Hooton), Wrexham, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and London Paddington.

In the Beeching Report the mainline services were cut in favour of concentrating on Lime Street, and Woodside was closed in 1967 and demolished (the site was then used as bus and coach park and has since been redeveloped for government offices). Rock Ferry's status was then much reduced, as it became a local interchange point between Merseyrail trains and the BR diesel service to Chester with no through line other than to access the docks. The easternmost platform and half of the eastern island platform were taken out of use as the main line was reduced to two tracks (with a diversion loop round the back of the disused platform for goods trains for the dock line, which was eventually closed in 1993).

When the Merseyrail service was extended to Hooton in 1985 Rock Ferry then just became a through local commuter station, with the original Mersey Railway bay platforms used only for stabling trains between peak hours. The original booking office was situated on the Bedford Rd. bridge over the railway and led down to the western island platform:

The interior was similar to Spital's, with a vaulted wooden ceiling and wood panelling:

This old postcard shows the Mersey Railway bay platforms looking towards the Bedford Rd. bridge, with the back of the booking office above the platform:

The other platforms were then accessed by wooden enclosed footbridges also similar to the ones at Spital:.


The eastern platform shelters and canopies, the footbridges and the surface level of the booking hall were demolished in the early 1970s, though the platform level lower storey of the booking hall was retained as staff accommodation.

The new single storey brick box booking office was built at the end of the Mersey Railway bay platforms which was accessed by new stairs and ramps built on the site of a former pub on the corner of the Bedford Rd. bridge. The new footbridge over to the eastern island platform was built in 1985 when the through line to Hooton was reinstated. This picture from February 1985 shows it under construction (there was an enthusiast's railtour running on the dock line):

Prior to that a walkway had been built across the trackbed at the end of the platforms when the Chester line had been cut back:


tl:dr - You might think Rock Ferry looks grim now, but it was a lot worse in the 1970s

[shiftwork2]

Speaking of formerly impressive, now sad, the badly located and mainly sidelined Lviv bus station



The mashrutkas still give me the place a full Societ impression and seemingly 1 in 15 cars is a Lada

Utterly beautiful, and it will be uprooted and walking around my dreams this evening.

[ToneLa]

Rock Ferry station
tl:dr - You might think Rock Ferry looks grim now, but it was a lot worse in the 1970s

Oh wow, thanks Buzby! I didn't expect to be enjoying reading about Rock Ferry station at 1 in the morning, but enjoy it I did!

Suppose like many smaller British stations it is sort of a bathetic remainder of what once has been. I didn't know it was as important as it was in its pomp, so to speak, so thanks for that - next time I'm inevitably stranded there I'll have a keener look around with those photographs in mind and put my imagination to work. Seems like it's had a very messy history, not just aesthetically...

Cheers!

[hummingofevil]

[PowerButchi]

I'd rather Wrexham Central to Flint, where I once waas greeted on alighting a train by a used maxipad.

[buttgammon]

A train station that blends in with the ugly 90s shopping centre that surrounds it? No thanks!

Wrexham General, on the other hand, is pretty nice.