I am still a little unsure what it is people want Virgin to do with their stations.
East Midlands Trains have replaced the platform surfaces at Leicester and Derby and also the canopies at Derby. Loughborough and Nottingham are up for renewal shortly. However, is this statement correct? Is it EMT that decided the work needed to be done and so did it or was it some intiative from Network Rail or some other national body?
Anyone who travels through Preston can see its potential to be a really attractive station, but it is actually not that long since they had the scaffolding up working on the roof.
Wigan North Western, Warrington, Stafford, Coventry etc are always singled out for criticism for being 60s rationalisations rather than grand victorian efforts or clean modern affairs. However, they do exactly what they are supposed to in terms of permitting local connections and providing somewhere dry to wait until the train arrives.
Maybe it would be worth specifying station upgrades as part of the franchise bid, but surely all that then happens is the subsidy gets recalculated to cover the cost of the upgrades (not directly, but this is what the accountants on the bid team will aim to achieve).
My personal opinion is that if the franchises need incentivising to take interest in all aspects of the railway, just as they had under the big 4 (or the smaller franchises before that) so that they have real power to brand things, to design and to integrate services. The problem with the short term franchise is that why would, or indeed should, Virgin create a stunning new design that really heralds their role in the town? (Note here that when the first stations were built they were major new technological advances, something really special. Now travelling between cities is second nature)
