Trivia: stations facing the wrong way for the town they serve

[adamedwards]

Prompted by seeing a pic of the new platforms at Bletchley with no exit to the town centre across the road. The time wasted would need many miles of high speed train running to compensate.

My own station at Hatfield faces the old town and to get to the entrance I have to walk past the north end of platforms 2&3.

Over to you for other examples where the station faces the wrong way for current needs.

 

[ijmad]

Plymouth's railway station is orientated wrong. Ideally you'd want a the main entrance pointed at the eastern end of the City Centre but instead you exit into no man's land and have to take a series of awkward roundabouts and bypass roads to get anywhere useful!

 

[D6130]

I think we have had a thread on this topic very recently. Woking is a prime example that comes to mind.

 

[Taunton]

Taunton for about 50 years "streamlined" down to one main entrance only, on the opposite side to the town. It's being rectified with a new entrance on the Down, town side only now - just where the old one closed in the late 1960s was.

New ticket office opens at Taunton Station

CUSTOMERS have been able to pay their train fares at a new ticket office at Taunton Station for the first time today.

www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk

New ticket office opens at Taunton station

 

[swt_passenger]

I think we have had a thread on this topic very recently. Woking is a prime example that comes to mind.

The one about why some SWML Platform 1s are not on the expected side? That mentioned Woking.

Platform numbering on SW Main Line

I have always wondered why the platforms at Southampton Central are numbered:

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Neo9320]

Taunton for about 50 years "streamlined" down to one main entrance only, on the opposite side to the town. It's being rectified with a new entrance on the Down, town side only now - just where the old one closed in the late 1960s was.

New ticket office opens at Taunton Station

CUSTOMERS have been able to pay their train fares at a new ticket office at Taunton Station for the first time today.

www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk

I knew something was different! Been travelling through that station nearly every week this year and couldn’t put my finger in what had changed (I’m slow, I know)

 

[D6130]

The one about why some SWML Platform 1s are not on the expected side? That mentioned Woking.

Yes, that's the one. I think a few other stations were mentioned too.

 

[Purple Train]

Colchester North. Whichever entrance you use, you have to pick your way through countless roundabouts to get anywhere.

 

[Peter0124]

Not quite the same but Coatbridge Central has the main entrance on the Cumbernauld platform, meaning you need to cross under an underpass for Motherwell/Glasgow etc.

 

[Basil Jet]

I think we have had a thread on this topic very recently. Woking is a prime example that comes to mind.

Woking has an entrance on both sides, it also has a foot subway beneath the station immediately next to the entrances.

 

[ASharpe]

Shipley is a bit unlucky in this regard being a triangle and the old platforms centred around the ticket office/car park.

Platform 5 could be great for getting into town, but when singled it was put on the wrong side and even causes a delay opening the doors.

The tunnel could easily have an exit to the west, but doesn't.

And almost every time I've used Apperly Bridge I've exited by jumping over the fence at the north side. Was the preexisting bridge not a hint that people might want to be at the North side of the tracks.

If I keep thinking about this I'll get angry about how car centric some stations are.

 

[Taunton]

I knew something was different [Taunton]! Been travelling through that station nearly every week this year and couldn’t put my finger in what had changed (I’m slow, I know)

Taunton station was fully rebuilt in the GWR widening project in 1930, with ticket offices on both sides and a new subway connecting. When it was desired to cut down to one entrance in the late 1960s the Up side one was selected, despite it being the wrong side for the town, smaller and lesser used of the two, because 'most people are leaving for Bristol or London, on that side'. Probably decided at Paddington, without visiting. After the impracticality of this was eventually realised the Up entrance side was enlarged around 1990, in a dreadful architectural effort (still there - look at Google Maps) done in mismatched Portland stone and slate, all lop-sided as a lean-to against the well-proportioned 1930 brick main structure all around it. Someone in the architect's office likely said "ah, West Country, that'll be cream-coloured stone then", again without visiting. This carbuncle was presented as an improvement, though still on the wrong side, being accessed from The Town (capital T's please) through the always gloomy and unwelcoming main road underpass.

After goodness knows how many requests etc from the council over the years the Down, town side has finally got things back as they once were, which is of course presented as "new". It's actually using what has been there all along.

 

[Bill57p9]

Not quite the same but Coatbridge Central has the main entrance on the Cumbernauld platform, meaning you need to cross under an underpass for Motherwell/Glasgow etc.

And the (only) station entrance is up a hill, so for the southbound platform you have to walk up, then into the station, then back down the stairs to the level you came from before climbing back up again. Plus there is no ramp.

And the entrance is on the opposite side to the town centre.

 

[Mugby]

I think a classic example is Bradford Exchange (or Interchange) If only it could be turned through 90 degrees it could be a through station instead of a terminus, with all the inconvenience of every train reversing being eliminated.

Of course the lie of the land, particularly down the hill from Laisterdyke probably precludes it but if the former Great Northern route to Halifax had been retained instead of the present day Low Moor route, it may not have been beyond the bounds of possibility.

However, it was all about cost saving when the former Exchange was closed. a grand old Victorian terminus with ten platforms replaced by a very functional, wipe clean, minimalist four platform affair, but facing the wrong way!
Any such fanciful scheme as I've suggested wouldn't even have been considered at that time. The irony is, in the past decade or so, it might have been!

 

[Magdalia]

It is a long time since I've been there, so there may have been changes, but Leamington Spa main station entrance was opposite side of the line to the town centre in the long lost days of the 20th century.

 

[Bantamzen]

Shipley is a bit unlucky in this regard being a triangle and the old platforms centred around the ticket office/car park.

Platform 5 could be great for getting into town, but when singled it was put on the wrong side and even causes a delay opening the doors.

The tunnel could easily have an exit to the west, but doesn't.

And almost every time I've used Apperly Bridge I've exited by jumping over the fence at the north side. Was the preexisting bridge not a hint that people might want to be at the North side of the tracks.

If I keep thinking about this I'll get angry about how car centric some stations are.

The tunnel was going to get another entrance at the P4 end when a supermarket and / or housing development was proposed for the land behind it. But yeah, Shipley isn't aligned well for the town centre, especially when you have to take your life into your own hands crossing the A6038 having either waded through the often flooded subway or walked halfway across the station to leave at the P1 exit.

I think a classic example is Bradford Exchange (or Interchange) If only it could be turned through 90 degrees it could be a through station instead of a terminus, with all the inconvenience of every train reversing being eliminated.

Of course the lie of the land, particularly down the hill from Laisterdyke probably precludes it but if the former Great Northern route to Halifax had been retained instead of the present day Low Moor route, it may not have been beyond the bounds of possibility.

However, it was all about cost saving when the former Exchange was closed. a grand old Victorian terminus with ten platforms replaced by a very functional, wipe clean, minimalist four platform affair, but facing the wrong way!
Any such fanciful scheme as I've suggested wouldn't even have been considered at that time. The irony is, in the past decade or so, it might have been!

If the Victorians hadn't been in such a rush to get lines into the city during the height of the wool industry explosion, there would surely have been a through line in Bradford instead of two frustratingly close terminals facing each other.

 

[DarloRich]

Prompted by seeing a pic of the new platforms at Bletchley with no exit to the town centre across the road. The time wasted would need many miles of high speed train running to compensate.

My own station at Hatfield faces the old town and to get to the entrance I have to walk past the north end of platforms 2&3.

Over to you for other examples where the station faces the wrong way for current needs.

Bletchley does face the wrong way now but only because of the 1960's changes to the town. Until then the station faced the centre of the old town/village.

 

[GoneSouth]

However, it was all about cost saving when the former Exchange was closed. a grand old Victorian terminus with ten platforms replaced by a very functional, wipe clean, minimalist four platform affair, but facing the wrong way!

It may have been wipe clean when it was built but even the wipe clean bits are looking very grubby these days. I wouldn’t want to touch anything there. Grim!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Aug 2022 ==

If I keep thinking about this I'll get angry about how car centric some stations are.

Couldn’t agree more. Too much of our transport planning over the years seems to be about getting car users to where they want to be… Parkway stations, park and ride buses, huge car park developments at stations etc.

Pedestrians don’t really matter, it’s the hourly unreliable bus and the graffiti lined stinking underpass to the station for us

 

[zwk500]

Prompted by seeing a pic of the new platforms at Bletchley with no exit to the town centre across the road. The time wasted would need many miles of high speed train running to compensate.

Nearby Wolverton station also has its main entrance on the 'wrong side', although historically the station building was on the bridge straddling the tracks.

 

[Titfield]

Newport (Essex) is interesting as whilst the station entrance is on the town side, there is a beautiful waiting room on the downside (to Cambridge) but only a shelter on the upside (to London). The traffic flow is very much towards London but presumably the station was built in the era when traffic flow was towards Cambridge.

 

[unlevel42]

Durham

 

[Springs Branch]

Not so much facing the wrong way in the horizontal direction as vertically – Moorfields station in Liverpool, when it opened in the late 1970s, had its entrance from the street at an inconvenient elevated level.

This was because at the time of building the Merseyrail Link line, the master plan for Liverpool city centre included an extensive network of high-level walkways to completely segregate pedestrians from traffic – so the station’s entrance was built to open onto the local walkway.

The urban planners’ walkway dream was dumped at a very early stage, and little of the system was ever built, but one lingering consequence was that to get into Moorfields you needed to climb up one of several steep, grim, sets of concrete stairs from the street then, once into the station, descend all the way down again – all the platforms being well and truly underground.

It’s a long time since I’ve used Moorfields, so I’m not sure whether this annoyance has been removed in some subsequent modernization over the past 45-odd years.

[EDIT] Irrespective of what has or hasn't been improved at the entrance in Moorfields (the street), I remember there's a separate station entrance at the Old Hall / Chapel Streets intersection. According to Street View this one looks much more like what you'd expect for the way into an underground station.

 

[BeijingDave]

One could make a case that Warrington Central does, given the station building is on the north side, the town centre is to the south of the tracks, and you must enter a west side entrance and go under the north side platform (towards Manchester) via pedestrian tunnel to reach the Liverpool platform on the town centre side.

However, there are two caveats: the west side entrance on a main road, and the fact that the north side of town is more populous than the south side anyway.

 

[A0]

Bletchley does face the wrong way now but only because of the 1960's changes to the town. Until then the station faced the centre of the old town/village.

Staying on the WCML - both of Rugeley's stations are arguably the wrong way - Trent Valley's entrance is on the east side of the line when the town is to the west and Town's is on the south, when the town is north east.

And a slightly controversial one - Stoke on Trent - the entrance faces towards Hanley, rather than Stoke itself.

 

[Y Ddraig Coch]

Dolgarrog isn't in Dolgarrog and is actually the wrong side of the river to Dolgarrog and the only foot bridge across to it is currently out of use meaning you cannot access Dolgarrog at all without driving miles around.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

The urban planners’ walkway dream was dumped at a very early stage, and little of the system was ever built, but one lingering consequence was that to get into Moorfields you needed to climb up one of several steep, grim, sets of concrete stairs from the street then, once into the station, descend all the way down again – all the platforms being well and truly underground.

Or you could use the escalator

It’s a long time since I’ve used Moorfields, so I’m not sure whether this annoyance has been removed in some subsequent modernization over the past 45-odd years.

No - it's still upstairs (or - ahem - up-escalator). I think that the fundamental problem is that the long escalator down to the subway level starts at the upstairs ticket hall level: there wouldn't be an easy way of shortening the escalator to just start at ground level.

Lack of money is perhaps a secondary problem.

 

[rower40]

Bodmin Parkway. The link road that joins the station to the A38 has to duck under the railway, preventing use of double-decker buses - which are used elsewhere in North Cornwall (for the sea views). So one has to change buses at Padstow or Wadebridge.

 

[Taunton]

Not so much facing the wrong way in the horizontal direction as vertically – Moorfields station in Liverpool, when it opened in the late 1970s, had its entrance from the street at an inconvenient elevated level.

This was because at the time of building the Merseyrail Link line, the master plan for Liverpool city centre included an extensive network of high-level walkways to completely segregate pedestrians from traffic – so the station’s entrance was built to open onto the local walkway.

The urban planners’ walkway dream was dumped at a very early stage, and little of the system was ever built,

This was an extraordinary planning fad of the era. In Edinburgh at the same time it was determined that there would be an upper level walkway along Princes Street shops side, and new buildings (there were a few) had to incorporate this in their design. These are of course now just isolated buildings with unused outer areas, they were never joined up, plus it's in opposition to the Listed Buildings there (many) which cannot have their appearance altered.

Apart from this stupidity, upper level shopping etc just doesn't work. You only have to look at the lightly used units (and those that go out of business up there after a short time) on the new upper level at Waterloo station concourse, which look down on all the bustle below.

 

[D6130]

Apart from this stupidity, upper level shopping etc just doesn't work.

Except in Chester of course....and, curiously in one street in Leek, Staffordshire!

 

[BeijingDave]

The system of upper level walkways works beautifully in Hong Kong, but that is a densely populated city where it's a pain to cross busy roads. And, subsequently, second floor shops do very well and often shops at street level are tattier and more low-market.

But British cities are completely different, and Liverpool is a highly walkable city (one that it's actually a pleasure to walk around at street level, the architecture is stunning).