railway stations

Something very appealing about neglected, decaying suburban stops ruthlessly ignored by speeding expresses.

St Johns: you mean the one in south-east London, Mike? brings on wonderful memories to me, especially looking down over the station from the main lines above. the great thing is the vagueness of the name: it could be in Lewisham, it could be in the suburbs of Plymouth, it could be a village in Northumberland. I like that.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but one of the great moments of the 90s for me was travelling through Dorchester West, a classic small GWR station (quite possibly a Brunel design) and noticing a piece of Tupac graffiti on the old buildings in a town which the Countryside Alliance would regard as their heartland. If there was a definitive moment where old romantic Toryism crumbled ...

That's the one. No ticket office, the machine doesn't work and nor do the information screens. It's a vague name and a vague place - Brockley by postcode, Lewisham by inference, New Cross by location, Deptford by association. And in the midst of a confusing junction. It would be especially great in fog.

Mike: yes, that's how I remember it. junctions like that fascinated me as a child - that's the main reason I loved travelling through south London. of course it was especially disastrous in fog in 1957: the Lewisham train crash that year was one of the worst ever.

Mark S: it's a long story. I ran away from home, yes, but marriage was not a reason - just absurd childish egotism and fantasy. seems longer ago than it is.

No, I don't think there were - it served directions North. But a lot of destinations previously served by Victoria (Glasgow for example) go from Piccadilly. And they seemed to rip some of the soul out of the place putting the tram station inside and linking into to the MEN Arena.

Piccadilly looks pretty swish these days though.

As for Victoria to London - there was a service run by First North Western a few years back from Rochdale to London - I'm assuming that it would have to had gone via Victoria. I was on a train 2 years ago which was from Lancaster to London, and was diverted off the West Coast line via Bolton and Victoria...

Rail freaks should also be aware that Midland Mainline will be starting a St Pancra Manchester service soon which will be cheaper than the Virgin one, and only take 30 minutes longer. You can of course smoke on MM and they have the best food of all the scumrail companies.

As for stations, I always liked Wigan North Western. Lovely pub next to it (Swan and Railway) and the platform were anti-first class, in that unlike many a provincial station, the first class areas on trains to and from London were at the opposite end of the platform to the exit, so the first class passengers had to walk the furthest, unlike the majority (it seems to me), where the layout of the platform via-a-vis the exit is designed to leave the first class passengers with the shortest walk out of the station.

huddersfield station is wonderful of course, and i like todmordens, pared down and greenery but still solid and chunky

(I'm certain that's what it says)

I used to live right by St Johns. I moved partly because of it. There's no ticket office because the people staffing it kept getting held up at knifepoint in the middle of the day. This is mainly because the whole station is in a cutting and the only ways to get off the platform are by crossing the railway bridge or getting on a train. If there are no trains and someone blocks you off on the bridge then you're fucked. A terrifying station, especially at night.

Search - Stockport, which is a real hole, but used to have (and maybe still does)a strange little stall selling every magazine in the world ever and cups of tea on one of the far platforms.

As for Mcr Vic, I'm fairly sure all the cross-country trains (Liverpool to Hull, etc) went through there until the late 80s or so, but even that's been switched to Picc.

Is this an appropriate moment to bring up Holborn Viaduct? What happened to it, what lines did it serve and is there any of it left?

Close second: Grand Central Station in NYC. So much more historical and grand than the current Penn Station, which is essentially a dank basement. Supposedly plans are finally afoot to move Penn Station across the street into the post office, though...

Manchester to St Pancras? Brings on wonderful images of luxury and gleaming 1960 chic (if you've ever seen the "Blue Pullman" film you'll know what I'm on about). I know that train took a route through Derbyshire that Beeching closed off later in the decade, but even so ...

Holborn Viaduct: I wrote to BR at the time (1989/90) asking if it was going to be preserved. I suppose I associate its demise with the aesthetic remaking of central London in the Thatcher era (it lost some of its convenience when the newspapers fled, because it was more or less in Fleet Street). The trains went to places like Sutton and Sevenoaks: it was effectively replaced with City Thameslink (originally St Paul's Thameslink IIRC) deep underground. I do have an image in my mind of a train running over the viaduct itself in early 1990 just before it closed, and somehow the Pet Shop Boys are in my mind - you can probably guess why.

some of the little stations in Derbyshire are indeed lovely, such as Cromwell and Whatstandwell

and a vote for 30th Street Station in Philadelphia!

The Portland OR train station has a very cool "Go By Train" sign on top, but the station itself is so-so.