Since my first unaccompanied train journey (I was 14 and clearly looking for the high life, having travelled with two friends to Wigan to watch my football team Wrexham), I have witnessed the end of smoking on platforms, the end of trains with slamming doors and the dreaded Pacer carriages, the influx of chain coffee shops and the ‘innovation’ of ticket barriers.
Thirty years on from that first journey (the locomotive was late and the ticket office in Chester where we changed trains was a Portakabin), I have been around, waited for, drank for and even slept in at least 400 UK railway stations as a blind non-driver and travel journalist. Much has changed since then, and much has remained the same with an almost heroic tenacity. Here is my view of the best and most desperate places to wait for your delayed 1046 in the UK; if you are lucky, “there will be no trams today.”
My five favorites
Hebden Bridge
If you have any train dreams, you’ll find them regularly sprinkled with images from Philip Larkin’s era Whitsun Weddings, then Hebden Bridge surrenders.
“All the windows open, all the pillows warm, all the feeling. The sense of urgency gone,” wrote the Poet from Hull. And, despite being in Ted Hughes country, the station has adopted these lines and resisted modernity with remarkable resilience. The station signs are still all in white sans serif on black backgrounds, there is a lamp room, signal box, hanging baskets and the original globe lights.
The only problem comes when you realise you’re ruining the atmosphere by not wearing a Trilby T-shirt, reading the Daily Sketch and smoking Park Drive cigarettes.
London Marylebone
The capital’s most civilised main train station hasn’t changed much since the Beatles passed through here at the beginning of 2017. A Hard Day’s Night more than sixty years ago.
In what feels like the landing point of a rather pretty market town in Shropshire, hanging baskets and easy access to six platforms make for a pleasant, unhurried experience – but one that only works if you’re travelling to Oxford, Birmingham or the Chilterns.
Marylebone is also home to one of London’s best train hotels, formerly known as the Grand Central Hotel and now known as The Landmark, with a glass-roofed conservatory filled with palm trees, balustrades and the clink of champagne glasses.
Cromford
Cromford station, a few miles from the Derbyshire seaside-themed town of Matlock Bath and 70 miles from the nearest coastline, perhaps avoids such faux innovation in favour of being the UK’s quintessential rural railway station.
There is usually one train per hour from here, but even if you have to wait 59 minutes for the next train, you don’t care because it has a rural feel.
This is the kind of place where you can read a chapter of William Makepeace Thackeray (rather than scribble a sudoku) while looking out over the lush woodlands of the Derwent Valley, and consider renting the old stationmaster’s house on the (now disused) platform on the far side. A gabled antique that once appeared on the sleeve of an Oasis single and is now a self-catering cottage.
Wemyss Bay
It’s worth the journey to Wemyss Bay, where ferries depart for the Isle of Bute, to disembark at this monumentally beautiful station. Built in 1903, the station was designed to get passengers and their luggage off trains and onto ships without exposing them to the harsh winds blowing off the Firth.
The result is a masterpiece of glass and ironwork that combines multiple architectural styles, appearing both forensically considered and effortlessly elegant.
Also just across the street from the mock Tudor entrance is McCaskies, one of Scotland’s best butchers and bakers. Next door is a spacious café serving great haggis, pies, potato scones and steak pies. You can eat there or catch the ferry across to the island.
Pitlochry
Perhaps the most wonderful experience of British train journeys is waking up in your cabin on the Caledonian Sleeper to Inverness at around 6am to a gentle knock on the door and then being handed a tray with bacon and a steaming cup of coffee.
Once you have opened your curtains, you can sip a beer in bed and take in the view of the Scottish Highlands, valleys, dark forests, and shimmering mist, broken only occasionally by fleeting glimpses of small stations like Pitlochry.
Request a ride here and (at least in writing) feel like you’re in one of John Buchan’s novels.
Before you follow the path of the River Tummel or climb those gloomy peaks, take a moment to browse the quirky bookshop in one of the station buildings and admire the locomotive-shaped whisky barrel outside.
Then take a deep breath; this is the town that attracted sick patients in the 19th century, thanks to Queen Victoria’s doctor telling her the air in these parts was so clean.
My five least favorites
London Euston
“Run, God, run, now, now Now“This is the cautionary mantra that will run through your mind as you and hundreds of others who haven’t booked their tickets nine months in advance slide down the deadly slippery floor of Euston station, as that mysterious Tannoy voice announces that your train will be leaving the platform in approximately six minutes. Always farthest from your location.
Retirees, children and foreign exchange students who do not have any knowledge about this subject specific The London ritual is to spread out in all directions, and you and your breathless siblings in large numbers will end up in one of the “waiting bays” that slope down to the platforms, where your path to the train will be blocked by ticket agents.
Your ticket will be forensically scrutinised as other passengers’ rolling suitcases roll over your feet. Finally, with great reluctance, you will be allowed to board your train. But it won’t be until you’re well north of Milton Keynes that you’ll catch your breath or your blood pressure return to normal.
Warrington Bank Quay
Fans of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece Brazil From the platforms at Warrington Bank Quay, there’s plenty to enjoy in the hellish industrial landscape. It might make Le Corbusier’s heart swell, but it leaves us passengers longing for a strong drink.
On one side your view will be dominated by the disused Unilever detergent factory, a greasy swamp of pipes, towers and windowless structures. On the other side of the platforms the view is of a car park and a dreary row of Victorian terraced houses.
You’d better get used to looking after both the factory and the houses; 67 percent of the trains that go here have been late in the last three months.
Chester
If St Pancras is the wedding cake of 19th-century railway station architecture, then Chester station is a two-day-old pigeon-pecked Gregg’s pastry.
The featureless, plain station frontage is a mid-Victorian stumbling block that grows impossibly long on either side of the entrance, turning into a goods depot and tattoo parlour.
But walk down the main street that runs in front of the station entrance and you’ll quickly realise that you’re far from being dropped off in the historic centre of Chester, but in fact a good mile away at the end of a windy and unattractive road – a strong shout for the most boring mid-sized station in Britain.
Sunderland
This is the train station that will give you the clearest possible idea of what it might be like to live an alternative life as a caveman. All platforms are completely underground, thanks to the excellent work of British Rail architects who decided to embellish the station’s previous state in the mid-1960s.
A few months ago, with great fanfare, a new station entrance and waiting room were opened. In a daring innovation, this entrance and waiting room were placed at ground level to accommodate modern flourishes such as windows.
But the interior of the new structure, minus the goods, resembles an abandoned Amazon warehouse — minus a few rows of sadistically uncomfortable chairs. The fawning of a station with the soul and panache of a wet carrier bag.
Darlington
Okay, so this is where the whole railroad story begins, George Stephenson Movement I was travelling from here to Stockton 200 years ago, and it’s hard not to be impressed by Darlington’s epic roof and magnificent platform clock.
But the fierce winds that blow through the station mean it’s always brutally cold: a station where pigeons wear Gore-Tex and hot coffee turns to ice in Styrofoam cups.