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Ugly railway stations

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Shoulders?-Stomach!



^ This is from the Macclesfield Express where a man tried to kill Macclesfield Station by driving into it with his car



Fair play to the lad worth the brain damage and permanent criminal record

shiftwork2

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 18, 2017, 09:44:46 PM


A really horrible interior:



Twenty minutes walk from the seafront through an industrial estate featuring a sex shop and car tyre remould outlets.  Welcome to the Norfolk coast, with your family in tow.

thraxx

Quote from: Cuellar on September 18, 2017, 09:05:23 PM
Aren't 99% of all train stations ugly?

Beautiful Egham!



How do you know about Egham station?

poo

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?!



They built it for a cunting game of golf

the

Oh look at these horrid completely functional buildings wankwankwank Why doesn't every single thing appeal to my projected aesthetic sensibilities like the opening credits of fucking Cheers wankwankwank

canadagoose

Surprised nobody's mentioned the home of that infamous railway station lift, Motherwell:



It's been a while since I've been past there, but it's pretty awful. Apparently they're planning to refurbish it, but it'll only look reasonable for a short time, I bet.

Sebastian Cobb

New Street has always been fucking ugly.


After


I seem to be in the minority of people who like brutalist architecture, but even the brutalist signal box there is wank.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: the on September 18, 2017, 09:57:46 PM
Oh look at these horrid completely functional buildings wankwankwank Why doesn't every single thing appeal to my projected aesthetic sensibilities like the opening credits of fucking Cheers wankwankwank

Maybe because some places manage to be notably good and others notably bad.

Ah, I get it - did your dad design one of these?


Cuellar


Attila

I'm at Fareham station roughly 6-8 times a week, and half of those are around 6am. It's dirty, dingy, run-down desolation. No working toilets, and before they were finally shut down, they were horrible things you used only when absolutely desperate. The 'waiting room' is taken up mostly by a bleak coffee shop; it's cold because it's open to the elements on one side, and the only benches face automatic doors that are opened so often that they act like a wind tunnel.

One of the pedestrian bridges was shut for months because bits were falling off it; it's been refurbished and reopened, and looks exactly the same. You do not stand anywhere near the overhang when it's raining, as nasty water drips down the siding and splashes off in all directions, most unerringly directly into your eyes.

They 'refurbished' the station over a period of about a year, finishing in early January this year; it's honestly impossible to tell what, exactly, was changed/upgraded. They added a lot of bicycle spaces/racks and that's about it.

Sometimes I have to go round the houses to Southampton Central when I can't get a direct train to my destination, and Soton is a bit grim, but it looks like that first big room Mr Wonka shows the kids in his factory compared to Fareham's soul-sucking despair.


thraxx

Quote from: Cuellar on September 18, 2017, 10:10:27 PM


It's fucking miles from there to Royal Holloway though.

I went to Strodes College in the town but seldom made it past The Railway pub.

Egham station does have one magnificent memory though - it was here that I heard that Duncan Ferguson has signed for Everton, in 1993.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

To pause from slaughtering UK stations for a minute - Bratislava's is usually the first impression anyone gets of Slovakia, whether arriving from plane or train, or bus:




Last time I was accosted for money by someone who wouldn't take no for an answer so had to dive into the station bar which was like that bit where Kevin gets in the taxi and the driver turns around and shouts AINT MUCH BETTER IN HERE KID



Shoulders?-Stomach!

Sibenik, Croatia



I think those stark brutalist architects weren't expecting their clean lines and abstract provocation to be spoilt by someone advertising JACKPOT CASINO and having a bright blue stall (which charges 10 kuna for..chipped ice)

buzby

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 18, 2017, 09:29:21 PM


They appear to have built a railway line through this 1980s era sports hall in Frome
That's it'a original 1850 wooden roof, with a clerestory window along the ridge. It's one of the oldest original station buildings in the country.
Quote from: MoonDust on September 18, 2017, 09:39:46 PM

I was just going to post Wigan North Western.

The main WCML platforms are up on a viaduct above street level, and are just a long, bleak expanse with a dumpy brick box canopy building above the stairwells.

The original Victorian station buildings and elaborate iron platform canopies were allowed to deteriorate after the war and were demolished in 1971. it used to look like this before it was remodelled:



A lot of these 60s and 70s station remodelling/uglification projects happened because BR was always short of money. At that time all the money was going into the WCML electrification and developing the Class 43/Intercity 125, so the Victorian stations that had been neglected since the war were a problem whose solution was demolition and the cheapest 'Will this do?' replacement.

The Tyne and Wear Metro stations have the same problem the Merseyrail stations have, in that once they were turned over to the local PTE (who generally had even less money than BR) maintaining the original buildings was usually out of the question, so they would be demolished and replaced with a bus shelter on the platform and a brick bunker ticket office at street level. Kirkby, as the end of one of the Merseyrail lines is a good example.
Original station (demolished in 1977 when BR services from Liverpool Exchange ended with the opening of the Merseyrail city centre underground network)

Current station:



Cuellar

Quote from: thraxx on September 18, 2017, 10:18:59 PM
It's fucking miles from there to Royal Holloway though.

I went to Strodes College in the town but seldom made it past The Railway pub.

Egham station does have one magnificent memory though - it was here that I heard that Duncan Ferguson has signed for Everton, in 1993.

Well, it's a bit of a walk, but you don't have a choice really, do you? Got to go through the station. And I lived out in 2nd and 3rd year, right in the heart of the Egham metropolis.

thraxx

Quote from: Cuellar on September 18, 2017, 10:29:36 PM
Well, it's a bit of a walk, but you don't have a choice really, do you? Got to go through the station. And I lived out in 2nd and 3rd year, right in the heart of the Egham metropolis.

Oh yeah?  But did you know the Egham based britpop also-rans Supermodel? DIDN'T THINK SO.

We used to love defacing the sign ALLEN HOUSE next to the station so it read ALIEN HOUSE.

And people said we'd never amount to anything.

pancreas

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 18, 2017, 10:19:46 PM
To pause from slaughtering UK stations for a minute - Bratislava's is usually the first impression anyone gets of Slovakia, whether arriving from plane or train, or bus:




Christ that is bleak. It's so communist, probably the only thing you can eat there is beetroot and lard.

hamfist



Weesen station in Switzerland. Ugh.

Phil_A

My heart sinks every time the train pulls into Luton Station, and I fucking live there! A worse impression of a town I don't think it's possible to give.



Oof, it's just so depressing with it's completely redundant exterior staircase(there was already an internal one) leading to a cramped, dingy ticket hall that hasn't been refurbished in decades and a shop space that has been home to numerous failed businesses(mainly because no-one in their right mind would want to hang around there for any length of time).



The shoddy state of it is all the more baffling if you go one stop further on to the airport station, which is all modern, shiny and chrome.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 18, 2017, 10:23:50 PM
Sibenik, Croatia



I think those stark brutalist architects weren't expecting their clean lines and abstract provocation to be spoilt by someone advertising JACKPOT CASINO and having a bright blue stall (which charges 10 kuna for..chipped ice)

Without the gaudy tat, this would be lovely.

The slovakia one looks like the outside of some of the lecture halls at my old university and the interior looks exactly like the innards of the local market.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Gulftastic on September 18, 2017, 09:10:31 PM
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.



There are plenty of above decent stops nowadays. I like South Shields - a brutalist emergence into the town once you get outside

BlodwynPig

The old Skopje train station



Don't have any photos of the new one, but I went there and was told don't bother with the trains. Inside I was wiping my glasses as I thought I had 70's grime on them, but it was just the dim and fuggy atmosphere. The ticket booths were hidden around a corner in some monolithic chamber reminiscent of Hellraiser through a sickly green/yellow Instagram filter. I approached the one open desk and could not see through the perspex screen. An old demonic voice asked me something in Macedonian and I left to get a bus.

pancreas

Quote from: BlodwynPig on September 18, 2017, 11:10:48 PM
There are plenty of above decent stops nowadays. I like South Shields - a brutalist emergence into the town once you get outside

The reason to go to South Shields is Colman's, Best fish & chips I've ever had and that's for damn straight.

BlodwynPig

I would go with Coventry as the worst in the UK, chaos.

Has anyone else used the "night toilet" at Newcastle central? It's still hanging on there despite the refurbishments over the years.

A train station in Paris - shit as high as my cock in one of the toilets. "we'd better get out of here" said my dad helpfully.


BlodwynPig

Quote from: pancreas on September 18, 2017, 11:26:07 PM
The reason to go to South Shields is Colman's, Best fish & chips I've ever had and that's for damn straight.

Did you already tell me this or someone else? if someone else then you're probably right.

Enzo

Broombridge in Dublin opened in 1990 and Irish Rail really went out of their way to spend as little as possible and to make it as unappealing to commuters as possible.



Placed behind an Industrial estate and next to a canal walkway any facilities that were there (not much) were destroyed in fairly short order and is a magnet for anti-social behaviour. This includes one classic story of people shitting on the platform where train doors would open.

Here's some of the charming locals in action



Good news is that a tram extension is coming out there at the end of the year and the railway station will have some redevelopment as a result.

pancreas

Quote from: BlodwynPig on September 18, 2017, 11:28:11 PM
Did you already tell me this or someone else? if someone else then you're probably right.

I probably told you ... but it doesn't matter, because I'm probably right for other reasons, like I know about these things. Perhaps we could take a jaunt there when you return.

Also, we must take lunch at the club and I won't hear a word of protest: the chef has a wonderful take on pheasant you simply have to try. Unfortunately the wine list is nothing special but the house pays d'oc is certainly tolerable. (I'll PM you the dress code.)

buzby

Quote from: hamfist on September 18, 2017, 10:36:05 PM


Weesen station in Switzerland. Ugh.
To be fair, it's been shut for 5 years. Close up, it has some nice  minimalist detailing (it was built in 1969 when the track was doubled):

An entrepreneur wanted to turn it into a nightclub, but SBB want to turn it into a timber loading station.

The previous station building was similar to others on the line, dating back to 1875:



Shoulders?-Stomach!



Allens West, right in the heart of the Teesside Industrial collapse, and generally only if you're heading to Boro' or Saltburn. Never seen anyone boarding or alighting.

If you like looking at disused mining equipment, tracks of abandoned land and slag heap panoramas set in front of slate grey skies and a cascade of misery Allens West is your place to be. The nearest humans seem to life in Eaglescliffe, the most memorable one I saw was wearing an actual swastika in broad daylight.