by Since the first time I traveled on a train without a parent in tow (I was 14 and, clearly wanting the high life, I went with two mates to Wigan to watch my Wrexham football team), I have seen an end to cigarette smoking . platforms, the demise of slam-door trains and the dreaded Pacer carriages, the influx of chain coffee shops and the “innovation” of ticket barriers.
Thirty years on from that initial journey (the loco was late and the ticket office at Chester, where we changed trains, was a Portakabin), I have sauntered, waited, drunk and even slept in at least 400 stations train in the UK as a visual sight. impaired non-driver and travel journalist. In that time, much has changed and much has remained, with almost heroic stubbornness, exactly the same. Here’s my take on the best and most desperate places in Britain to wait for your delayed 1046 service, and, if you’re lucky, “no trolley service today.”
The five that I liked the most
Hebden Bridge
If you have a smile on your train, images from the Philip Larkin era are regularly mixed in. Marriages of the Cell, then Hebden Bridge delivers.
“All windows down, all warm cushions, all sense. For being gone in haste,” wrote the Bard of Hull. And, despite being firmly in the land of Ted Hughes, the station has embraced these lines and resisted modernity with an exquisite comeback. All the station signs are still written in white sans serif on a black background, there is a lamp room, signal box, hanging baskets and original globe lights.
The question only arises when you realize that because you are not wearing a trilby, reading the Daily Sketch and smoking a Park Drive cigarette, you are destroying the environment.
Marylebone London
The capital’s most civilized mainline station hasn’t changed much since the Beatles ran through it at the start of the A Hard Day’s Night more than six decades ago.
Feeling more like the landing point of a beautiful market town in Shropshire, the hanging baskets and easy access to the six terraces make for a delightfully unhurried experience – although it’s only useful if you’re traveling to Oxford, Birmingham or the Chilterns .
Marylebone also has one of London’s best railway hotels in the form of the old Grand Central Hotel, now The Landmark, with a glass-roofed courtyard winter garden full of palm trees, balustrades and the sound of clinking champagne glasses.
Cromwell
A few miles from Matlock Bath, a Derbyshire seaside town 70 miles from the nearest coast, Cromford station eschews such ersatz novelties in favor of being, perhaps, the UK’s quintessential rural railway station.
There is usually only one train an hour from here, although you won’t have to worry if you have to wait 59 minutes for the next one; that is the bucolic air.
This is somewhere to read a chapter of William Makepeace Thackeray (rather than scribbling through sudoku) while gazing at the pristine woods of the Derwent Valley and contemplating the old stationmaster’s house on the far terrace (which is not now in use). It’s a blessed curio that once featured on the sleeve of an Oasis single and is now a self-catering cottage.
Wemyss Bay
It is well worth the trip to Wemyss Bay, where ferries go over to the Isle of Bute, just to land at this stunningly beautiful station. Built in 1903, it was designed to get passengers and their luggage off the train and onto the vessel without exposing them to too much of the harsh winds that blow in from the Green.
The result is a masterpiece of glass and iron, blending multiple architectural styles, that feels both forensically thoughtful and yet effortlessly elegant.
Plus, across from the faux-Tudor entrance is McCaskies, one of Scotland’s best butchers and bakers with an airy cafe next door serving sublime dogs, pies, tattie scones and steak rounds to eat in or take away on the ferry as it is. heads over to the island.
Cloughtown
Perhaps the greatest experience of British train travel is being woken up in your cabin on the Caledonian Sleeper to Inverness at around 6am by a gentle knock on your door, followed by a tray with a bacon roll and give you a mug of steaming coffee.
After you blindly open your window, you can flash your brew in bed, watch the Scottish Highlands roll down, valleys, dark woods, shimmering fog, only broken, now and then, by wandering views of small stations like Clochrytown.
Apply to leave here and you’ll be rewarded (at least in the summer) with feeling like you’ve just stepped into a John Buchan novel.
Before you leave and follow the River Thames path or climb those brooding peaks, take a moment to browse the exceptional bookshop now housed in one of the station buildings, and to see the loco-shaped whiskey barrel outside see.
Then take a deep breath; this is the town that attracted valetudinarians from the 19th century thanks to Queen Victoria’s doctor, who declared that the air in these parts was particularly undiluted.
My five least liked
London Euston
“Run, God, run, now, now now.” This is the predetermined mantra that will go through your mind as you and hundreds of other people who didn’t book their tickets nine months in advance, slide across the deadly slippery floor of Euston station’s concourse when that gnomish Tannoy voice announces that your train will be there. to be leaving in six minutes from the platform ie always is further away from where you are standing.
As pensioners, children and foreign exchange students who are not aware of this sui generis London rites, spread to the four winds, you and your giant brothers will end up in one of the “holding pens” leading to the platforms, where your path to the train will be blocked by ticketing staff.
While the suitcases of other travelers roll over your feet, your ticket will be examined in a forensic manner. Finally, with great reluctance, you are allowed to board your train. But you won’t get your breath back, or your blood pressure back to normal, until you’re well north of Milton Keynes.
Warrington Bank Quay
Fans of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpieces Brazil there will be plenty to enjoy the awe-inspiring industrial scene from the platforms at Warrington Bank Quay. It might swell Le Corbusier’s heart, but it only does commuters trying to get a strong drink.
Your opinion on the one hand will be completely controlled by the Unilever detergent factory out of use; Instantly ologenic tubes, towers and windowless buildings. The view from the other side of the terraces is a car park and a gloomy row of Victorian terraced houses.
You had better get used to looking at the factory and the houses; a whopping 67 percent of the trains that went here in the last three months were delayed.
Chester
If St Pancras is the wedding cake of 19th century train station architecture, Chester station is a two-day-old Gregg’s pasty with pigeons pecking at it.
The flat, featureless station frontage is a mid-Victorian flake, sprawling on either side of the entrance until it turns into a goods yard and tattoo parlour.
Walk down the main drag that runs out before the station entrance, however, and you’ll quickly discover that far from being buried in the historic center of Chester, you’re actually miles away at the end of a winding road and not is attractive. A strong voice for the worst medium-sized station in England.
Sunderland
This is the train station that will give you the clearest idea of what it would be like to have another life as a tragedy. All the platforms are completely underground thanks to the amazing work of the British Rail architects who decided to deck over the previous incarnation of the station in the mid-1960s.
Most notably, a new station entrance and waiting room was unveiled a few months ago which, in a bold piece of innovation, was placed at ground level so that it could have six modern friezes as windows.
The inside of the new structure, however, looks like an abandoned Amazon warehouse, minus the goods – except for a few small rows of sad, uncomfortable chairs. The soulfulness of a station with a soul and the burning of a wet carrying bag.
Darlington
Okay, so this is where the whole story of the railroad begins, with the story of George Stephenson Movement traveling between here and Stockton 200 years ago. And it’s hard not to be impressed by Darlington’s epic roof and magnificent terrace clock.
But the winds blowing through the station mean it’s always so cold. This is a station where pigeons are regularly seen wearing Gore-Tex, where piping hot coffee is turned into ice in styrofoam cups.
