London termini

St pancras and padington are the rulingest. Get inside the great midland hotel it is truly amazing. I used broad street as a young un, could get from dalston to the city better than the crappy bus service on the kingsland road. (Dalsron Junction obviously ruled too)

Paddington and Liverpool Street in terms of usabilty. St Pancras looks great from the outside, but it's rather grim inside. Kings Cross would be very nice if it wasn't for that godawful late 70's thing stuck on the front. Worst is probably Waterloo.

I'm really quite bored with Liverpool Street, the only time it felt special was when I lived in Frinton-On-Sea for a while and we'd go on day trips to the capital. Walton, which is one stop on from Frinton, is the end of the line and it seemed odd that all those trains that started from such a monstrous station as LS should end up at a tiny little station where there was no more track. They didn't all end up there of course, but I didn't appreciate that at the time.

Being a Yank and having visited London a handful of times in my life, I have a slightly different take on London's train terminals. Namely, I saw them as much as tourist attractions (don't laugh, Londoners) as places to catch trains. Paddington Station = Paddington Bear (we have those books and cartoons over here). Euston = Morrissey's destination in the Smith's "London." Waterloo = where Terry meets Julie and crosses over the Thames River (thankee, Mr. Davies). (Saint Pancras was just an odd name, so it was interesting for that reason.) So of course I snapped pictures of all three, causing everyone (British and American) to scratch their heads because none of the foregoing stations are particularly photogenic. Every bit as odd as a foreign tourist taking pictures in New York's Penn Station (an ugly bit of 1970s work, Grand Central has been renovated and is much more photogenic), but hey I was a tourist and I acted accordingly :-)

Willesden junction = gritty urban scenary. Not technically a terminus but cool none the less.

St Pancras, as detailed elsewhere, I enjoy the grimness, it looks like a nice old station because of it. Have you been in the booking office? All wood! It's like the glory days of the railways! Woo! Waterloo can never be anything other than rubbish, unfortunately, due to rank location and ranker thousands of people every day.

St Pancras is gorgeous, of course. I've also never seen it remotely busy; since the revival of the Thameslink route in the late 80s, I think all the local services to Herts/Beds were withdrawn from St P leaving it just with hourly services to the East Mids and Yorkshire. Perhaps it's mental at rush hour, I dunno. I'm not quite sure what the creation of the international station will do to it cosmetically.

Kinda fascinated by Marylebone too; I've never needed to use it, but had a wander around one Saturday simply because it's as far as the #2 bus goes from Crystal Palace. Oddly lit.

Badgerboy: even *I* don't like the 70s King's Cross sign, though I always have a soft spot for that period feel. But not enough, in this case.

Mike: you're right that most of the suburban services were diverted from St Pancras in 1988. The result is, as you say, a curiously unhurried place, where the overhead wires are unused for most of the day. Somehow, that adds to the charm.

Didn't Marylebone very nearly suffer the same fate as Broad Street around the same time, circa 1986? It used to be said (by John Betjeman, quelle surprise?) that you could hear birdsong in the buffet there. Mind you, that was 1954. Certainly has an odd "village" atmosphere.

Bill disses "his" terminus: I'm at the other end of the same mainline to Waterloo he lives on, and I really can't be that hard on it, even if it lost the curiously dated feel of the old "Windsor" station (much older than the rest of Waterloo) when it was demolished for the Eurostar terminal. That said, I've probably used Charing Cross even more often than Waterloo (used to come there from north-west Kent + still often go from Waterloo East to Charing Cross these days) and it's a horribly crowded sweaty place, concourse blatantly and famously too small for crowds at rush hour. I love that area of London, but not that station particularly.

Any thoughts on Euston? Classic Wilsonia, or the station that Milton Keynes deserves?

This sort of thread is exactly why the Dunedin lot have stolen a march on us.

I don't like any big British Rail stations, basically. I've spent far too much time in them to appreciate any of the architecture any more, I just feel the shabby non-placeness of them. Kings Cross is an unspeakable place in an unspeakable area, Euston is like Kings Cross with even the tiny risk-related interest leeched out (and that sculpture park, Christ), Waterloo is like an enormous Tie Rack, Victoria at least has some almost-good pubs nearby but has gone sharply downhill now the 24-hour Whistlestop has been closed.

Marylebone almost went, yes (I've been reading my dad's books). Got revived due to new services or steam specials, I believe. I really wish Euston hadn't been rebuilt, because any railway station with a Doric arch, grand-as-fuck booking hall where they used to have a choir singing at christmas and where you can easily get lost sounds good to me. It's bizarre now, I feel, it feels small, yet is massive. Hmmm. and you might still be able to get lost - BTW, anyone been to Reading station? It took me half an hour to find the platform to Basingstoke, it has to be the most confusing station in Britain.

I got stalked by some drunken troglodytes trough Reading station last Friday, yes. It didn't seem any more confusing than anywhere else (it couldn't be worse than Manchester Picadilly, where only a random selection of trains appear on the Departures board).

All of the London termini seem fairly interchangeable to me.

Fondest station, Charing Cross. It looks great from the outside, it's kinda cosy inside (and warmish too) and it was my first terminus. The trains are shit, though.

Greatest station: Victoria, cos it's the gateway to places like Portsmouth with all them groovy ships, and it has a KFC upstairs! Hallelujah!

Euston is ugly, but it has a burger king, a decent Fullers pup upstairs, and it's dead handy for firebombing Railtrack, as all young pups must at some point.

Favourite station anywhere: Amsterdam Centraal - it looks utterly utterly wicked from the outside, and THE TRAINS ACTUALLY WORK!

Love St Pancras, and YES I have been to the rooms inside (they are often hired for book launches, etc). Euston probably looked great on an architect's plans but those never figure for horrible concrete stain and algae and all the pigeon shit pebbledashed onto the present-day building.

Otherwise I love Glasgow Central Station for the mournful noises it makes.

Ogden: i)Isn't Portsmouth also reached from Waterloo (Robin it would look a lot nicer if you could see the entire frontage). ii) You are the first person I have ever seen being enthusiastic towards Portsmouth. You Might be alone.
For all yuo St. Pancras lovers, there is a virtual tour somewhere at www.lcrproperties.com, who own it and are redevoloping it.

oh and if you want a glimpse of what st pancras looks like inside the hotel then it feature in the video of Spice Girls - Wannabe

I loathe St Pancras. Many a Sunday morning did I spend there, having left a Nightclub in Islington Which Shall not be Named, walked down Pentonville Road at 7am and spent two hours waiting in the wind tunnel that is the station concourse waiting for the first train back to the armpit that is Leicester.

That said, architecturally it's absolutely stunning (and I'm not just talking about the hotel frontage - the whole structure is a marvel of its time.)
Re: the hotel itself, DYK it was never opened? It was the most expensive building of its kind when built, but no provision was made for plumbing to the rooms - just as it was about to open, huge advances were made in the Victorian world of plumbing and the whole place was a massive, if gorgeous, white elephant. The main staircase in particular is jaw-dropping.

God I'm boring!

Big up the Pompey! HMS Victory r0x0r!

PS. Channel 4 are a bunch of liars.

ST Pancras will be reopening (hotel and busier station) as part of Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Also in the huge renovation plans is ripping down nasty green lozenge on the front of Kinkers.

I was a regular user of the fantastically named Bed-Pan line as a child and have hugely fond nostalgicc memories of St Pancras. I wander on to the concourse every now and then just to relive the hanlcyon days. What a sap.

the dingyness of the concourse will be ruined by fosteresque shenanigans, also will be closed off, you enter from the side and only be alllowed into the station proper if you have a ticket. see the lcr site above

Antwerp's magnificent turn-of-the-century 'Centraal Station' gets my vote. With its stylish domed entrance hall, and grand stone stairways leading up to glass-covered platforms it could pass for a Cathedral. Amsterdam's CS has its charms, though not at 3am and no lighting as I discovered last week. St Pancras + Glasgow, for reasons already mentioned whilst Leeds Station is quite possibly the most depressing spot on the planet. If you have a significant other, avoid it at all cost, as well as being an architecural mess its young loves graveyard.

Euston is horrendous. The excellent Head Of Steam pub just outside can't redeem it's big empty concourse and lumpen architecture. I mean, what was the idea behind that big grim space out front.

I wuv Manchester Picadilly, ah, many fond memories of sprinting to platform 14 to catch the Preston trane coz it MAKE SENSE to put it a million miles away from the main platform concourse, ah, fond memories. Main concourse = mingXor but once you get onto the platforms, classic. Preston station is my favourite station in the UK, no arguments. And I also have a soft spot for KIRKHAM station in the early morning. It's where I'm going to set the video I am going to make for STARS, no really.

Euston to me was always the first bit of Lunding I arrived at. Look at the space age thing that tells me how much money has been invested in Wales each second! YOWSERS eh? It would be better if they made the Investing in Wales sign bigger. I hope it's still there. I also get an aura of ZEN LIKE CALM slumping down by SOCK SHOP to wait for Preston bound trane, usually whilst eating some overpriced Burger King nosh. Soothing.

Sarah is dead right about the investing in Wales sign.

The Burger King at Euston is mad though. You buy yr 'food' and then have to walk across the concourse to a weird seated area if you want to sit down and scoff. I like my burger on a tray, not in a bag.

Two Burger Kings @ Euston! One with just yummy takeaway brown bag goodness and another one whot has SEETS in the quite frankly ODD eating "complex" on the right hand side. Euston sin = charging for the laydeez pissoir.

Oooh, I want a spicy beanburger now.

euston has no soul, you can't see the trains, paddington and pancras are best in this respect, euston is like an airport's worst nightmare

don't you just love it when, five minutes before it leaves, they fire up the engine of an intercity 125 and it belches black smoke upwards to the arches above, it like a brief glimpse into the days of steam.

frankly baffled by this thread. smell of piss -- classic or dud?

Yep, Paddington and Pancras are both lovely stations, big vaulted ceilings are the only thing for stations, I hate all the subterranean ones such as New street at Birmingham and Euston has the same feeling, grim just grim. But, the placa de Catalunya station in Barcelona was underground and I liked that one.

Leeds is a hole of a station, as is Bournemouth, it looks as if it never got finished, scaffolding everywhere, or it used to be when I was last there. Chesterfield has the windiest station ever.

Throwing it wider the Gare D'auterlitz in Paris is a messy smelly crazy place where the metro comein through the side wall at first floor level.

Milon Centrale is a fascist masterpice with 6 story high ceilings in the ticket hall, and a slightly nouveau vaulted train shed, fascist realist sculptures on the outside.

this seems to have developed wider than just London now, so, has anyone been to Lille station? thats weird, its all big and nice and glass, but the glass doesn't meet the wall. so when you are stood there in big cold february winter, the snow blows right in and the building is freezing, but it looks like it should be all nice and warm. what a silly station.

do you me lille europe or lille flandres ( I presume europe as Ir ecognise the description, I'm just being a pedant)

Glasgow Central isn't really that nice. Well, it's OK I spose.

I'm quite fond of London Bridge, I think. It's often been the jump- off point for nice days and nights.

The Wales investment thing is no longer there. Perhaps they're not investing in Wales anymore. Or maybe Wales no longer exists. I thought I went to Swansea, but it was really Swindon. My favourite station is Islip, because I am a twat, and you can also climb underneath the platform and lurk. PLus there are rabbits running about, and you can see the sinister petrol dump across the track. And no announcements, clocks, or information screens. And hardly any trains either. There's only one platform, see. There is a spacious carpark. No one knows why though.

Oh, the central station in Milan is fantastic. As I remember it, grumpy Milanesi point out that it was designed before Mussolini came to power and so isn't strictly speaking fascist, it just looks it. (Kind of like London University's Senate House, it suggests that architecture resonant of brute power and pomposity can actually be a good thing - or something.) Estacion de Francia in Barcelona is a fine building, as well.

If we're straying outside London, I have a soft spot for little stations where the big trains don't stop. Shotton, Flint, Lichfield Trent Valley, Wigan North Western, West Allerton. The last one is a particular favourite - platforms three times longer than anything that actually calls there, disintegrating at the ends, entropy creeping nearer the benchless, windowless waiting room in the form of BR weeds, posters advertising cheap awaydays in North Wales (offer ends July 31st 1975). Terrif.

Milan Central is lovely, until you get too drunk and fall down all the steps in front of a group of carabinieri, bloodying your knees and scraping the nail varnish off your toes in the process. Obviously, one's can of vodka and coke remains intact and one still manages to stagger to Hollywood nightclub for a nite of laughing at Mick Hucknall's hair.

canonbury station is desolate and empty

Dorchester South station is 1989 Heritage Britain PLC at its worst and is fucking horrible. Dorchester West station is a great small-scale GWR relic - might well have been designed by Brunel himself - which, when I last used it, had a piece of graffiti dedicated to Tupac. I loved that, really ought to have photographed the two stations on the same day or something - the heritage shit represents what the media wish provincial England was like, the Tupac tribute represents what it's *actually* like.

Yep, it's the real Robin.