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My most depressing station is ...


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Seeing a thread requesting information about Manchester Mayfield caused me to remember how our spirits would fall when we'd realise the train we were about to catch for a great time out in Manchester was to terminate at Mayfield instead of London Road/Piccadilly

 

.....

 

Earlier in life Coburn Road somewhere outside Liverpool St in the 1940s looked like it had died a decade earlier.

 

.......

 

What would be your nomination be?

 

dh

 

Coburn Rd was a very well embalmed corpse. It closed during World War 1 I believe .

 

Among the worst I can remember was Heysham - one track left in a rotting trainshed with one (boat) train a day.

 

Lincoln St Marks at the end was bad - Barton on Humber is a very bad example of the bus shelter in a wasteland. Sheringham's not great either , but you don't get to see much of it

 

Ditton in the North West?

 

Bradford Forster Square in the final years before rebuilding wasn't so much depressing as a full-on Gothic experience. One almost expected a spectral Midland porter with his throat cut to beckon at you from inside a derelict waiting-room as you shuffled out through the gloom

Edited by Ravenser
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British Steel Redcar

Teesside Airport

Although very few people actually see these platforms there is at least things to be seen from them albeit derelict in the first one

Stockton and Hartlepool must be the most depressing in that area due to the massive decline in status of both locations

Edited by russ p
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Rugeley Trent Valley. Covered in Samaritans posters. No wonder.

I have to disagree about the current Rugeley TV. If you are talking how it was in the 80s, with just four trains a day, usually concrete sprung non-corridor Class 304s or later, when the trains were switched to Coventry, a DMU, with no trains to Walsall and Birmingham, and just two windowless Abacus shelters with their usual roof leaks, I'd agree, but today the station has probably it's best ever service, with hourly semi-fasts to London which are well used and popular, and hourly trains to Birmingham (half hourly on Saturdays and even with a Sunday service, which when you consider that up until the 1990s Sunday local trains in the West Midlands were virtually unknown apart from the Cross City, is good). Last time I popped to the station was last month when I had half an hour to kill before meeting friends, and it looked a lot tidier and better looked after than when I used it in the late 1990s. Plus, you have an astonishing variety of trains passing by, intermodals, freights, Pendolini and Voyagers on full tilt through the curves, and the unexpected oddities like heritage stock and steam.

 

If you like your stations to look like something from the Railway Children then yes, it's not architecturally a winner. But compared to how it was in my living memory, it's a completely different place service wise.

Edited by wombatofludham
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Coburn Rd was a very well embalmed corpse. It closed during World War 1 I believe .

 

Among the worst I can remember was Heysham - one track left in a rotting trainshed with one (boat) train a day.

 

Lincoln St Marks at the end was bad - Barton on Humber is a very bad example of the bus shelter in a wasteland. Sheringham's not great either , but you don't get to see much of it

 

Ditton in the North West?

 

Bradford Forster Square in the final years before rebuilding wasn't so much depressing as a full-on Gothic experience. One almost expected a spectral Midland porter with his throat cut to beckon at you from inside a derelict waiting-room as you shuffled out through the gloom

 

I once went on a railtour which visited Sheringham using an HST many years before the crossing was re-instated.  It took quite a long time for everyone to detrain via the one coach which was in the platform!

 

Chris Knowles-Thomas 

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Filey Holiday Camp 

Rotherham Masborough

Denton

Loughborough Junction

Mill Hill Broadway

Aldrington

Darnall

 

All are good contenders.  All score highly on the scale of depression.  There was a wry joke made by students when I lived near the area that of stations to be mugged at Stepney Green ranked top of the list; despite it's subsequent makeover it's still quite high.

 

But my vote goes, shamefully, to the station I overlooked from home for many years and which still serves - just about - as a gateway to my adopted home town.  Drum roll please ..... the honour goes to:

 

Hayle.

 

Stripped of absolutely everything it now boasts two bare platforms.  There are small "shelters" but they have no seats, no glazing where there should be windows and no doors.  They shelter you from nothing.  The signalbox is long gone.  So are any other buildings.  There is nothing to tell you when the train might actually arrive unless you visit on a rare day when the "information screen" is working.  Usually it is not.  You are left high (above the town) and sometimes dry (but often wet) hoping that the occasional train which is timetabled to call will actually run and be something akin to on time.  There are gaps of several hours when nothing stops to serve a town of around 7000 permanent and 1500 additional summer residents.   Even the Paddington HSTs sometimes stop at Saltash and tiny St. Germans but not usually at Hayle.  If the railway, in its collective sense, wanted to show depression talk to people who would dearly love to use the train id only it stopped.  And if you could shelter while waiting.  And if you could buy a ticket (which you can't - there's not even a machine) rather than be harassed for a penalty fare on board the train.  In fairness there's a tiny bit of nice beach view.  But half of what there was is now obscured by a supermarket.  

 

And yes there is a Samaritans notice at the platform end is very appropriately placed immediately before the viaduct.

 

I

 

 Wouldn't include Denton in your list but have you looked at  Moston in North Manchester just a bus shelter sat on a platform at the bottom of a cutting. there used to be buildings there but long gone. 

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Hadfield is a pretty sorry place these days. Wouldn't be quite so bad if the last few reminders of it's status as a through route were removed, but the mournful sorry looking gantries at the east end just look like a gravestone for the Woodhead route. RIP.

Edited by rodent279
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Hadfield is a pretty sorry place these days. Wouldn't be quite so bad if the last few reminders of it's status as a through route were removed, but the mournful sorry looking gantries at the east end just look like a gravestone for the Woodhead route. RIP.

 

Isn't that appropriate for Royston Vaysey?  This is a local station for local people, we'll have no trouble here, tell me, are you at all, local...?

 

We didn't burn him.

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I'd have to say Handborough, not because the present bus-stop halt is so awful, but because of the lovely little station that it replaced. I've yet to go to the new Reading General, but I suspect that is a million times worse. And, yes, I know its not General any more, but I'm one of those who refuses to call our flag anything other than the Union Jack - and the department store in Staines is Kennards, not Debenhams. (CJL)

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I was fortunate enough to visit the old CP terminus in 1990 - a glorious anachronism both architecturally and in terms of the vintage stock still using the station.

 

It would make a great inspiration for a model!

 

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Thanks for this Eddie. That's exactly the view I remember when arriving from Digne in 1975.  The train shed was originally one of the pavilions used in the 1889 Paris exposition and, like the Eiffel Tower, was a temporary structure. It was bought second-hand by the Sud France for its new terminus in 1891 which I guess they saw as being the gateway to Provence and the Alps.

It's interesting that until it closed it was still laid out like an early "Embarcadere" with an arrival and a departure platform on each side and sidings between them to store carriages undercover .Most of the early mainline termini laid out that way acquired extra platforms and outgrew their oriignal trainsheds as services increased but that wouldn't have happened here.

When I saw it in 2008 it appeared that the train shed had simply been demolished which was depressing. Fortunately someone had the good sense to put the dismantled steelwork  into storage and it is being rebuilt.

 

From the 1950s to 1989 (when SNCF closed its branch line from St. Aubin to Digne) Nice Sud  was the terminus of a seasonal through service from Geneva via Grenoble called the Alpazur. I arrived in Nice from Grenoble in winter and SNCF seemed determined to ignore the presence of the CP line. There have been suggestions to regauge the standard gauge branch line from St. Aubin to Digne and for the CP to run it as an extension of its line

It is surprising how many of France's metre gauge railway and even rural steam tramway networks had rather grand stations at their hubs-  St. Brieuc and Le Mans spring immediately to mind but there were others,    

Edited by Pacific231G
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I'd have to say Handborough, not because the present bus-stop halt is so awful, but because of the lovely little station that it replaced. I've yet to go to the new Reading General, but I suspect that is a million times worse. And, yes, I know its not General any more, but I'm one of those who refuses to call our flag anything other than the Union Jack - and the department store in Staines is Kennards, not Debenhams. (CJL)

 I never really liked the old Reading General all that much - some of my teenage train watching trips included it- so I won't dismiss the rebuilt station till I've been there but the old Reading South station was a lovely little terminus.It was a sad loss when it closed in 1965 and Platform 4a at Reading General that replaced it was a travesty.

 

Despite the insistence of pedants who don't understand the meaning of the word synonym (see also points and turnouts) Union Jack is a perfectly proper term for our national flag.

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 I never really liked the old Reading General all that much - some of my teenage train watching trips included it- so I won't dismiss the rebuilt station till I've been there but the old Reading South station was a lovely little terminus.It was a sad loss when it closed in 1965 and Platform 4a at Reading General that replaced it was a travesty.

 

Despite the insistence of pedants who don't understand the meaning of the word synonym (see also points and turnouts) Union Jack is a perfectly proper term for our national flag.

 

Not wishing to stir up trouble here.....but isn't it only a Jack when flown from an RN ship?

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Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Compared to its formerly complex glory, it is sadly reduced. But it does at least retain the funky asymmetric platform layout as a reminder of what once was, and it must have got pretty 'atmospheric' on the up side, when the one time low platform canopy also covered the through line. Any loco going through that with steam on must have caused a fair fug!

 

I just shuts my eyes when going through it, and replay its former appearance in my mind, the varying platform heights and branch bays, the jumble of little buildings including Milord Salisbury's private waiting room, the cramped up and down yards, loco shed, multiple signalboxes, Sherriff's...

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Middlesbrough station for me.

 

The fact that the Germans tried to kill my mother there on August Bank Holiday Monday 1942 where she worked for the LNER as a Goods Booking Clerk doesn't help. She was on holiday that day but a couple of her friends died in the raid, and her office was destroyed. One of the friends was an Ex-Railway Policeman whoi was in her office brewing tea, as he usually did, for his Ex-colleagues when he called in, when the lone raider arrived. Had my mother been  at work, she would not have survived, a huge steel beam landed across her chair, crushing her desk.

 

Every single time I use the station, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!

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The only place that has ever filled me with a burning urge to go to Grimsby

so you haven't been to the refreshment rooms at Cleethorpes???

 

If you want Grim the old Thornaby Station was pretty dire.. yes it had toilets... locked....yes it had a waiting room with a live fire.... locked.... and it was snowing in the middle of June....

 

Baz

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At the moment it's Bognor Regis.  Height of the Summer season and the concourse has been plunged into chaos as it is being all ripped up and rebuilt.

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Middlesbrough station for me.

 

The fact that the Germans tried to kill my mother there on August Bank Holiday Monday 1942 where she worked for the LNER as a Goods Booking Clerk doesn't help. She was on holiday that day but a couple of her friends died in the raid, and her office was destroyed. One of the friends was an Ex-Railway Policeman whoi was in her office brewing tea, as he usually did, for his Ex-colleagues when he called in, when the lone raider arrived. Had my mother been  at work, she would not have survived, a huge steel beam landed across her chair, crushing her desk.

 

Every single time I use the station, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!

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