HomeUnited KingdomHad the sheer delight of travelling from this train station today. Almost looked derelict. What’s the most and least swanky stations in the UK?
Perfect metaphor for Swindon over the past two decades as a whole really, especially given the towns rich rail history. What is worse is it’s usually the first thing anyone visiting by train sees. Last I heard Network Rail recently took back control of the building, so I’ve been hoping it gets revamped or torn down soon because it’s a blight.
Glasgow Charing Cross is another one of the sad post-war concrete stations
Terraformers are expressly forbidden from recreating Swindon.
I find it hard to discuss Swindon without mentioning the roundabout.
Did you enjoy the fine selection of coffee and vape shops?
Teesside Airport and Redcar British Steel for two of the most miserable stations.
The same prefab design that got basically no service before getting closed and awful accessibility . With the latter you couldn’t even leave the station.
Euston station, the original being impressively grand and the new station being particularly horrible.
It really is a shame this is the first impression of Swindon – is it any wonder it gets such a bad reputation. But in fact Swindon has some lovely areas, the railway village is just a 5min walk from the station and is gorgeous, but most people only know it by the train station, and first impressions matter.
I work on the railway, I am not going to go into the age old “the old ones are better” because they objectively *just* are better. So this is not my comprehensive, but here are the 2 that popped to mind immediately.
[Crawley Station is a monument to how I cannot mesh the fashion and art of the 1960s with the architecture. It’s legitimately disgusting.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xMfeHJKXycbNDH8M6) It’s so poorly located, does not look like a station and just the absolute worst of utilitarian design, that it’s just etched into my mind as horrid.
Edit – turns out they have slightly revamped Crawley since I was last there. Here is the view I saw on my last time there [U-G-L-Y ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JDsGNW4v75BMdgJ99)
[Huddersfield, just far nicer than you expect when walking out the door and looking back at it. ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5eERcghQ3eDb7EFP7)It is just far bigger than you expect, the square it walks out on to it lovely and it usually means that “okay, you missed the last train to Hebden Bridge, but it’s only a £14 mistake in a taxi, rather than an Uber from Central Manchester” so it’s alright by me. Bonus points for seeing the hotel directly to the front-left that was the birthplace of Rugby League.
It’s called Signal Point and had been empty for years before Network Rail bought it back in 2020. They’re still working out what to do with it.
Swankiest I’ve been to is Marylebone in London. It’s one of the smaller ones, trains come in from nice bits of Oxfordshire, and it has a covered road outside linking to the 5 star Landmark hotel which is fairly swanky itself
Least swanky is any of the types similar to “Dorking Deepdene”.
It’s literally a line of wooden boards and nothing else.
No ticket office, no ticket barriers. Just one [CRT monitor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Dorking_deepdene_station.jpg)) to, in theory, keep you informed but in practice seems to just show everything running on time until the train you’re waiting for disappears from the board when it’s due; whether the train turns up or not.
For a station which actually has decent service – 2 trains an hour to both Reading and Gatwick – it’s by far the least swanky station there is.
I stopped commuting to Dorking over a decade ago, but the all too experience of spending an evening assaulted by the weather, not knowing when a train will actually stop – this was the era they’d avoid “cancelling” a train by just skipping all the stations between the first and last without penalty – on that plyboard misery hasn’t left me.
Most swanky: St Pancras
Least swanky: Euston – permanent building site, too small, not enough seats, and the screens face the wrong way
Reading is almost both in one. The “new” (though it’s been several years since the upgrade) part of the station is quite nice
London Blackfriars is the nicest modern station, in my opinion. It’s over a river and made of glass! And the south bank exit takes you right out into my favourite bit of London.
The swankiest older station is probably Edinburgh Waverley. And I like Newcastle Central too.
I find Newport in Wales’ station really ugly.
Wakefield Kirkgate has a beautiful Victorian stone entrance that they restored a few years ago but the rest of it is dire. You do not want to be down that part of Wakefield after dark. Once I was returning home from uni in Sheffield (fairly nice station) and some dude followed me all the way to my bus stop about 5 min walk away. He asked if I had a light, said no sorry, then asked for my number. I said no, he called me a bitch and walked off.
When I was at university, I used to like Penmere station in the summer. The locals always took good care of the flowers and it just felt like a cute little station. Perfect for taking to my miserable Asda job at the time.
Euston is swanky without the s. Terrible place to catch a train, always has been and whatever buildibg work they are doing to it now hasn’t actually made it worse as that simply isn’t possible.
Bognor Regis Station has the most marvellous second hand bookshop so it can have a vote for swanky.
Cannot beat Harlow Mill for sheer industrial bleakness.
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Please accept my most sincere apologies for having to go anywhere near Swindon
Nicest building in Swindon that.
I always try to be at least a bit positive when it comes to the UK on reddit to counter the endless negativity, but man, that is so grim.
Tear it down
The original Coventry station is an absolute vile shithole, as are Snow Hill and Birmingham International.
For a nice train station I do quite like Birmingham Moor Street.
I’m very fond of York station.
On the flipside there’s Dudley Port station (not in Dudley, nowhere near the sea) which is little more than a bus shelter on a wind-blasted bridge.
Hmm, least swanky? Glasshoughton probably.
Why? [It’s just a wall](https://foursquare.com/v/glasshoughton-railway-station-glh/506999653d7cfe42e733a8e4)
St Pancras is swanky.
[https://c8.alamy.com/comp/FJ6M8J/st-pancras-international-station-incorporating-st-pancras-renaissance-FJ6M8J.jpg](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/FJ6M8J/st-pancras-international-station-incorporating-st-pancras-renaissance-FJ6M8J.jpg)
Perfect metaphor for Swindon over the past two decades as a whole really, especially given the towns rich rail history. What is worse is it’s usually the first thing anyone visiting by train sees. Last I heard Network Rail recently took back control of the building, so I’ve been hoping it gets revamped or torn down soon because it’s a blight.
Glasgow Charing Cross is another one of the sad post-war concrete stations
[I’m quite](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CW2YJ8/aerial-view-of-preston-railway-station-in-lancashire-CW2YJ8.jpg) [fond of](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/19/f0/04/93/img-20191105-150944502.jpg) [Preston](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CPBP82/preston-station-on-the-west-coast-main-line-wcml-CPBP82.jpg) [station](https://www.visitnorthwest.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/preston-26092015-188.jpg)
Terraformers are expressly forbidden from recreating Swindon.
I find it hard to discuss Swindon without mentioning the roundabout.
Did you enjoy the fine selection of coffee and vape shops?
Teesside Airport and Redcar British Steel for two of the most miserable stations.
The same prefab design that got basically no service before getting closed and awful accessibility . With the latter you couldn’t even leave the station.
Euston station, the original being impressively grand and the new station being particularly horrible.
It really is a shame this is the first impression of Swindon – is it any wonder it gets such a bad reputation. But in fact Swindon has some lovely areas, the railway village is just a 5min walk from the station and is gorgeous, but most people only know it by the train station, and first impressions matter.
I work on the railway, I am not going to go into the age old “the old ones are better” because they objectively *just* are better. So this is not my comprehensive, but here are the 2 that popped to mind immediately.
[Crawley Station is a monument to how I cannot mesh the fashion and art of the 1960s with the architecture. It’s legitimately disgusting.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xMfeHJKXycbNDH8M6) It’s so poorly located, does not look like a station and just the absolute worst of utilitarian design, that it’s just etched into my mind as horrid.
Edit – turns out they have slightly revamped Crawley since I was last there. Here is the view I saw on my last time there [U-G-L-Y ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JDsGNW4v75BMdgJ99)
[Huddersfield, just far nicer than you expect when walking out the door and looking back at it. ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5eERcghQ3eDb7EFP7)It is just far bigger than you expect, the square it walks out on to it lovely and it usually means that “okay, you missed the last train to Hebden Bridge, but it’s only a £14 mistake in a taxi, rather than an Uber from Central Manchester” so it’s alright by me.
Bonus points for seeing the hotel directly to the front-left that was the birthplace of Rugby League.
It’s called Signal Point and had been empty for years before Network Rail bought it back in 2020. They’re still working out what to do with it.
Swankiest I’ve been to is Marylebone in London. It’s one of the smaller ones, trains come in from nice bits of Oxfordshire, and it has a covered road outside linking to the 5 star Landmark hotel which is fairly swanky itself
Least swanky is any of the types similar to “Dorking Deepdene”.
It’s literally a line of wooden boards and nothing else.
No ticket office, no ticket barriers. Just one [CRT monitor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Dorking_deepdene_station.jpg)) to, in theory, keep you informed but in practice seems to just show everything running on time until the train you’re waiting for disappears from the board when it’s due; whether the train turns up or not.
For a station which actually has decent service – 2 trains an hour to both Reading and Gatwick – it’s by far the least swanky station there is.
I stopped commuting to Dorking over a decade ago, but the all too experience of spending an evening assaulted by the weather, not knowing when a train will actually stop – this was the era they’d avoid “cancelling” a train by just skipping all the stations between the first and last without penalty – on that plyboard misery hasn’t left me.
Most swanky: St Pancras
Least swanky: Euston – permanent building site, too small, not enough seats, and the screens face the wrong way
Reading is almost both in one. The “new” (though it’s been several years since the upgrade) part of the station is quite nice
https://images.app.goo.gl/FbfMQJrZ1Mw57KR86
The older part is still pretty grim though
https://images.app.goo.gl/w3fCwLqa7TM1bUsx5
London Blackfriars is the nicest modern station, in my opinion. It’s over a river and made of glass! And the south bank exit takes you right out into my favourite bit of London.
The swankiest older station is probably Edinburgh Waverley. And I like Newcastle Central too.
I find Newport in Wales’ station really ugly.
Wakefield Kirkgate has a beautiful Victorian stone entrance that they restored a few years ago but the rest of it is dire. You do not want to be down that part of Wakefield after dark. Once I was returning home from uni in Sheffield (fairly nice station) and some dude followed me all the way to my bus stop about 5 min walk away. He asked if I had a light, said no sorry, then asked for my number. I said no, he called me a bitch and walked off.
When I was at university, I used to like Penmere station in the summer. The locals always took good care of the flowers and it just felt like a cute little station. Perfect for taking to my miserable Asda job at the time.
Euston is swanky without the s. Terrible place to catch a train, always has been and whatever buildibg work they are doing to it now hasn’t actually made it worse as that simply isn’t possible.
Bognor Regis Station has the most marvellous second hand bookshop so it can have a vote for swanky.
Cannot beat Harlow Mill for sheer industrial bleakness.
https://www.instantstreetview.com/@51.789785,0.132308,333.29h,-14.51p,1.74z,atPuyEMzePizNUdUHrj6IQ