Small stations with big station facilities

[PatB]

I always thought Stapleton Road looked an awful lot bigger than I could imagine it needing to be, even in its heyday.

[Zomboid]

The NER (or its predecessors) built a few attractive overall roofs at stations where most other companies would have thought twice about a waiting room on the second platform. Filey, for example.

[Andy Kirkham]

I always thought Stapleton Road looked an awful lot bigger than I could imagine it needing to be, even in its heyday.

Stapleton Road used to be named BRISTOL (Stapleton Road). It was regarded as the city's second mainline station and there were Cardiff-Portsmouth services that called there instead of at Temple Meads. 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Country junction refreshment rooms were a bit of a 'thing'. I think the one at Horsted Keynes is original, rather than being a purely post-preservation innovation...

 One of my late maternal aunts was employed at what she always referred to as the Horsted Keynes station shop until I believe a year or so before BR closure. It was always difficult getting clear information from her, had a 'somewhat disorganised' mind shall we say. But one thing was clear: she laughed to scorn the suggestion that she might resume this activity as a volunteer, and instead found paid employment in pubs nearer the village, which disagreeably involved more wear on shoe leather.

 

(She lived in one of the nearer of the 'railway cottages' on the embankment near the station, and more primitive accomodation I have never seen in England. Earth closet outside two-holer jakes, shared standpipe water supply, hot water by coal fired range, no electricity supply when I first saw it as a child. The nearest road access was at the station frontage. OTOH quite apart from the sizeable garden there was acres of cultivable railway land all around, and she and her husband effectively ran a rent free smallholding on some of it until they departed that location. Pretty close to a medieval peasant existence, they had not two beans to rub together, grew the vast majority of their food, and they loved it.)

[svitapeneela]

The NER (or its predecessors) built a few attractive overall roofs at stations where most other companies would have thought twice about a waiting room on the second platform. Filey, for example.

Rillington springs to mind

[Pacific231G]

Marylebone. Yes, it’s a central London terminus, but even now the front building is vast compared to the amount of platforms and 30 years ago it was definitely overprovisioned

Marylebone was planned for eight platform faces but half of them were "possible future extensions. that were never built by the GCR. The concourse and main building was designed to service a much wider station with the odd effect that for most of its life the concourse has only served platforms on its eastern half. The GCR naturally had visions of competing directly with the other main lines to the north and for Marylebone to becoming comparable with Euston or King's Cross which of course it never did.  Despite having been twice the width of its railway infrastructure Marylebone still seemed modest for a main line London terminus and did have the air of a provincial station.So much do that when Peter Denny needed a suitable terminus building for his upgrade of Buckingham to a small provincial cathedral city he based it on Marylebone. 

 

One of my favourite examples of an over-grand station for its traffic and the town it serves is St. Omer, the first main station on the Calais-Lille line

,

Creative Commons Foudebassans

Despite its magnificent cathedral St. Omer is a fairly modest market town with about 15 000 inhabitants so why it ever warranted such a magnficent station is not clear, It wasn't even a major junction with just the single track branch towards Boulogne (now partly abandoned) branching off from the secondary Calais-Lille main line there and just three platform faces . It may have simply been that two important politicians came from the town.

 

(Updated) The building itself, built in 1904 to replace a far more modest structure, is now classified as a historic monument and is currently being refurbished. When it reopens, under the title of "La Station" in the autumn, most of the building will be dedicated to various local and regional innovation inititatives  but it will still function as a railway station.  In SNCF's hands it fell into such decay that it had become unsafe so in 2011 was locked up and replaced by a portakabin type building that currently houses the ticket office.

Edited December 31, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Poggy1165]

I suggest Southport (Lord Street). Five platforms, an overall roof and a footbridge, and yet the normal service probably only needed one. I suspect the only time it was ever busy was for Southport Flower Show and (maybe) Bank Holidays. Had a sprawling goods yard and an engine shed too. BR lengthened the platforms and resignalled just a year or two before it closed completely. Total waste of money.

[luckymucklebackit]

Have a look at Crieff, two platforms which look to be capable of eight coach trains at least and a through track, looks incredible with a railbus in one platform.

 

Jim