The Mortuary Station in Sydney is nice, although it's not actually used as a station any more.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3175/2580103890_eae65576cd_z.jpg?zz=1

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Mortuary_station_platform_inside.jpg/773px-

Had my first visit to Blackfriars since the re-opening this morning. It's definitely improved, at least in the entrance - there's still quite a lot of work to be done on the platforms, it seems. But it's a bit non-descript. Not that the old one was an architectural delight.

Some good stuff on Blackfriars here:

www.londonreconnections.com/2012/london-terminals-blackfriars/

Bad:

Memphis - or at least it was in 1996 - too far out of the centre, badly lit and not somewhere you really want to have to wait for a train which is running late (which ours was)

Manchester Piccadilly, or at least part of it, specifically (I think) platforms 13 and 14. Generally disapprove of stations which have platforms randomly separated from the main group, and at Manchester it's made worse by having ticket checkers at the end of the bridge, producing a bottle neck of passengers going in and out; plus it's fifty pence to go for a piss and the change machine never works. The platforms themselves have too many trains going in and out and are too crowded.

Nis in Serbia, everything shut when the main train of the day arrived (in mid afternoon, not like it was midnight) no cash point, no buses, long walk into town.

Euston's a pain in the arse, not least for the last minute notification of what platform your train is leaving from, and the resulting stampede down the walkways and sprint towards the train.

Good:

Pretty much any German station in a city or reasonable sized town - always options for food and alcohol, onward transport nicely integrated, lockers easy to find and use, even the punks and metallers standing round getting pissed are usually a fairly jovial bunch. And they'll tend to have a big imposing entrance which leaves you in no doubt you're going into a train station.

Walt Flanagdansk Dog wrote:


A couple of years ago we had an overnight in Nis and the next morning headed down to the station. We encountered a Mk2 Ford Granada taxi so decided to splash out on a bit of style for the journey to the station.

However, the night before a good half foot of snow had fallen. There is a slight hill on the way out of town, before a fuck off great hill down to the station. The taxi driver decided he needed a bit of clout to get up the gentle hill, but misread the fact that he had no way of stopping on the other side.

To this end we found ourselves in a high end 1980s, gold Ford Saloon, careering down a one in seven Serbian hillside, with all brakes, including the handbrake, fully on, to no effect.

What made the descent slightly more terrifying is that halfway down the hill is a level crossing, which was firmly sounding its bells and flashing its lights. Fortunately Serbian trains move at a glacial pace and are prone to stopping for no reason, so we cleared the crossing before any sign of a train.

The only thing that halted our ungentrified movement were the station steps at the bottom of the hill, which we hit sideways at a good 20 mph.

Imagine Cool Runnings but instead of Jamaicans in a Bobsleigh at the Olympics, think of four portly trainspotters from Swindon in a decrepid Ford Grandada, on a snow covered dirt track in the arse end of Eastern Serbia.

You are right about the station and everything being closed. Instead, all we had to do to pass the four hours delay to our train was watch a Serb taxi driver try and knock two of his wheels back from a 45 degree angle, using only the coping stones he had recently displaced from the station steps.

I found Bussels Midi station to be rather ugly and grim.

And I presume that's after the multi-million Euro renovations to make it more attractive.

Antwerp Central is probably my favourite. The inside of the main building and the train shed is really fantastic. It used to be an end station, which meant that trains going from Holland to Brussels had to drive in and then drive out in the other direction, which took ages. So now they've tunelled an underground platform under the train shed. Where the tunnel passes under the train shed they've simply dug down to the tunnel, so that there is a really big canyon in the middle of the old train shed, and natural light comes all the way down to the underground platform. It's really quite impressive. And perhaps, along with the ship lift at Strepy-Thieu, helps to epxlain Belgium's debt problems. Some photos:

Waiting hall:


Train shed link to the waiting hall:


The train shed:


To the underground platforms:


The wooden ceiling in main hall of Copenhagen Central is also quite nice.

Amsterdam Central could be nice but they haven't put much effort into taking care of it.

I'm also a huge fan of Antwerp Central.

In addition to all of the advantages Bryan notes, it is right next door to the Zoo (that's the station on the right).

Antwerp is a massively under-rated city in general.

Antwerp has just become a place to visit. My wife will be overjoyed.

I absolutely loved Antwerp when I stayed there during Euro 2000 - charmed not just by its magnificent station, but its manic all-night bars and fine, strong ales and aggressively rumbustious football culture. So, er yeah NHH, just the ticket for a chap with wife and young family in tow.

Walt Flanagdansk Dog wrote:


They are probably trying to deter people from using the train. After all, they really should be walking.

City Hall is a beautiful rediscovered station on the New York subway. It was opened in 1904 and closed in 1945 and although it was boarded off and sealed from the outside it was kept absolutely intact. Located as a loop at the end of line 6, it was hidden from the world until 2010 as passengers had to alight at Brooklyn Bridge, the last stop before.

Since 2010 passengers can now stay on. And although the train doesn’t stop at City Hall you can still get to marvel at this architectural gem.

It's fabulous (though that lighting is particularly good). There are tours a couple of times a year that I highly recommend.

Christ, that is a thing of utter beauty. If my sis' moves back to NY (which is looking likely), I'm all over that on the next visit over.

Is that daylight coming through, or shimmering tiles? If the the former, how deep is the shaft that's letting that down, and are there any pics of it topside?

Threads like this make me feel very warm. We're like the funkiest, most erudite and well adjusted bunch of train geeks in the world.

Shrewsbury has a very impressive mock Tudor station.

It was on Michael Portillo's show.

NHH, it's daylight.

In keeping with it having been constructed at the very beginning of the subway era in New York, the station isn't very deep.

More detail and photos here.

Anyway, going back to the London stations discussion at the start of the thread (which rather passed me by), most of them are pretty charmless - with London Bridge, Victoria and Euston perhaps my least favourite.

St Pancras, for all its grandeur and renovation, feels like a shopping precinct with some not-obviously-easy-to-access train platforms tacked on - an appropriate metaphor for UK transport policy for the past 30 years. So yeah, I'd probably go for Marylebone too as the top one.

Glasgow Central's a proper station.

NHH wrote:


Have you been to Music lately? There's people throwing feces.