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What is the most dismal un-passenger friendly large railway station in UK

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Bletchleyite

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I've seen adults and children alike looking terrified at the chasm (gap doesn't do it justice) on Platform 17. It must easily be a foot or more.

It might well be that accidents are rare because it is so obviously dangerous - that is often the case.
 
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For a short while I used it, I thought Charing Cross was pretty poor. The concourse is tiny and gets claustrophobic. Especially when it’s used as a thoroughfare itself for a bridge across the Thames to Waterloo station. Plus, there’s no way to get from platforms 1-4 to 4-11 once you’ve passed the ticket barriers. Which isn’t helpful if you suddenly want to catch another train.

Cannon Street suffers from a similar problem.
 
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quarella

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SteveM70 said:
Coventry
Cold, grey, windswept and pretty much unchanged since the 1960s
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Grade II listed and hurrah for the powers that be for recognising the historical significance of at least one of the stations from the 1955 West Coast Main Line Modernisation Plan.
 
Old Yard Dog

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Euston with its last-minute Le Mans starts is very passenger unfriendly, particularly if you are not very mobile. They leave insufficient time for everybody to board what are often very long trains.

I have found the staff at Milton Keynes Central and Crewe to be not particularly friendly on a couple of occasions, although these incidents are not recent.

But worst of the lot is Birmingham New Street. It can be very hard to navigate around, they change platforms at the last minute, and the platforms themselves are dangerously narrow.
 
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DavidGrain

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When they were rebuilding New Street they removed a few buildings from the platforms and the luggage trolley ramps which used to go through a tunnel to the postal sorting office. This made some of the platforms a a little less cluttered. In all the photos and videos published during the rebuild they showed platforms 8 & 9 which were the widest platforms anyway. The higher numbered platforms suffered from being curved as in the pre 1960s station they were in the former Midland Railway station which was separate from the former London North Western Railway station but used adjacent approach tunnels..

The idea of the redesign was that passengers would wait in the so called 'lounges' as in airports until their train was due. Was that ever going to happen? No way. Incidentally I don't think I have seen any seating in the Blue and Yellow Lounges. The toilet facilities in the Blue and Yellow Lounges are limited and the toilets in the Red Lounge have been out of use for at least a month now.

Another writer has mentioned trains being replatformed at short notice. A few weeks ago I observed a train being replatformed from 10A to 1A. Unless you knew to go to platform 10B to change to 1B that would have entailed exiting the barriers and re-entered through another barrier.

The real problem with New Street is that at platform level it is running at near capacity. The expensive rebuild was to provide more ambulant room at concourse level for passengers to avoid having to close platforms because of overcrowding as did happen before the rebuild, You still see crowd control operatives at times on the station.
 
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My candidate should really be discounted according to the criteria in the OP, as it only has six platforms, but I'll nominate Canning Town anyway.
 
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Kite159 said:
The yellow hatched boxes at the top of the escalators from the Jubilee Line area?

It's an attempt to stop folk stopping at the top of the escalators to release the handle on their suitcase/to look up which platform their train is due to leave from and to keep a passenger flow for passengers
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They are spreading further now, boxed areas on the concourse side of the gatelines. I don't think the luggage issue is key, but the way the departure indicator is situated means you need to be stood well back to scan all across it to see where your train is shown. You have to stand halfway back in the concourse to take it all in, and the indicator over the entrances to 3-5 has been sited right where the escalators come up from the Jubilee.
 
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Ken H

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quarella said:
Grade II listed and hurrah for the powers that be for recognising the historical significance of at least one of the stations from the 1955 West Coast Main Line Modernisation Plan.
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cov station was badly damaged in WW2 bombing. I think that was the driver for reconstruction rather than WC modernisation.
Remember, cov city centre was largely rebuilt on a central municipal plan.
 
yorksrob

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quarella said:
Grade II listed and hurrah for the powers that be for recognising the historical significance of at least one of the stations from the 1955 West Coast Main Line Modernisation Plan.
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Ken H said:
cov station was badly damaged in WW2 bombing. I think that was the driver for reconstruction rather than WC modernisation.
Remember, cov city centre was largely rebuilt on a central municipal plan.
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It's a very good example of a station of the era, and well deserving of listing.

It also has plenty of shelter and all the facilities you'd expect of a station that size.
 
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DanTrain

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Whattraintoday said:
New Street is the only station where I've had to ask for directions just to leave the station!
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Can I add the Northbound platform at Durham to that list. With the work they're currently doing, the rather small 'to the city' signs point to a barrier and it's far from clear where you're supposed to go to reach platform 1 (and the rest of the world!).
 
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markindurham

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DanTrain said:
Can I add the Northbound platform at Durham to that list. With the work they're currently doing, the rather small 'to the city' signs point to a barrier and it's far from clear where you're supposed to go to reach platform 1 (and the rest of the world!).
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I agree - it's a long hike round the approach road too. Having said that, given what they're doing, the long walk is probably the best option to get the job done quickly. The signs though...pathetic
 
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markindurham said:
I agree - it's a long hike round the approach road too. Having said that, given what they're doing, the long walk is probably the best option to get the job done quickly. The signs though...pathetic
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Apparently, part of the reasoning for it having had ticket barriers (before they were removed) was to prevent illicit crossings between the platforms. In fact the problem is that it is under massive strain while another station a few miles north is massively under-served. Perhaps if efforts were made to reduce its catchment area by encouraging others to use another station nearby...
 
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trebor79

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Illicit crossings between the platforms? I lived in Durham for 15 year and never heard of such a thing.
 
Mutant Lemming

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if you extend it to places served by trains to and from the UK then Gare du Nord has to be close to being top toilet.
 
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EM2 said:
The concourse at Midi I thought was rather good. The less said about the platform level, the better...
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The problem with it (other than the platform level, which as you say is a bit scummy) is that it is in just about the most unpleasant area you could imagine, and as such has a massive low-level crime problem, so I never feel safe there. The facilities aren't terrible, but it's not somewhere I like to spend any length of time.
 
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DavidGrain

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I have travelled to Gare Du Nord only once as my Eurostar journeys are usually to Brussels. If you bolt on modern international trains and the requirement for security and passport control to a 19th century railway station you are going to have unsatisfactory results. St Pancras Internation was effectively built from scratch using the original train shed and the warehouse facilities in the basement. The East Midlands and the South Eastern platforms are the parts which were bolted on here and I think they suffer from that.

From experience I do now know which platform exit to use at Brussels Midi. In the past I have used the wrong exit and either gone out of the station and walked round to the main entrance or walked along one of the other platforms. I think Brussels Midi is one of the few stations where I have been asked for directions. I was able to answer because I had, a few moments before, been studying a plan of the station.
 
61653 HTAFC

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Bletchleyite said:
The problem with it (other than the platform level, which as you say is a bit scummy) is that it is in just about the most unpleasant area you could imagine, and as such has a massive low-level crime problem, so I never feel safe there. The facilities aren't terrible, but it's not somewhere I like to spend any length of time.
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It wipes the floor with Paris Nord though, in terms of facilities and layout. They do a good job of keeping the beggars/hawkers outside rather than in (something Frankfurt-Main Hbf struggles with).

I'm surprised you feel unsafe there as you've mentioned before you're quite a big fella. On the other hand I'm a bespectacled and not overly-masculine 5'8" and never once felt threatened inside, nor when nipping outside for a smoke and to photograph a few trams!

In fact I'm not sure the area is that unpleasant, even by Brussels standards. On one side (with the trams) there's a bit of a beggar issue but on the other (with the old jeep on display) there's a couple of friendly bars... unless it takes a turn when the evening sun goes down, that is!
 
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Bletchleyite

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61653 HTAFC said:
I'm surprised you feel unsafe there as you've mentioned before you're quite a big fella.
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It's not so much a feeling of being vulnerable to violent attack (though if someone pulls a knife or gun, they are suddenly ten feet tall in any practical sense), it's more a case of feeling "on alert" all the time to the likes of pickpocketing which is rife there (and at Brussel-Zuid too). It's a bit like walking down La Rambla in Barcelona, or in places in Amsterdam[1] - you feel you need to keep your hands in your pockets and can't relax.

I feel more comfortable walking through rough areas or alone at night in the UK because the kinds of attack possible there are mostly likely to be violent and unarmed, or armed with something not very threatening like a box cutter, so I feel I've got a good chance of defending myself or running away (I'm a decent runner too, and while not that quick I can run a very long way (I've done ultramarathons) so any pursuer just after my phone would give up after a while).

[1] I did fend off a pickpocket in Amsterdam once - I saw him go for it out of the corner of my eye and gave him an almighty whack. But I was lucky to see it at all.
 
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61653 HTAFC

61653 HTAFC

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Bletchleyite said:
It's not so much a feeling of being vulnerable to violent attack (though if someone pulls a knife or gun, they are suddenly ten feet tall in any practical sense), it's more a case of feeling "on alert" all the time to the likes of pickpocketing which is rife there (and at Brussel-Zuid too). It's a bit like walking down La Rambla in Barcelona, or in places in Amsterdam[1] - you feel you need to keep your hands in your pockets and can't relax.

[1] I did fend off a pickpocket in Amsterdam once - I saw him go for it out of the corner of my eye and gave him an almighty whack. But I was lucky to see it at all.
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I can understand that, for sure. I was warned about pickpocketing before going to Barcelona last autumn by about 8 different people, but at no point did I feel vulnerable to it or suffer it. I think a lot of cities have reputations they don't necessarily deserve among British folk.

For example in Brussels the robbery is more likely from the ones we elect to work there than the ones asking for a ciggie outside the station!
 
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Bletchleyite said:
Gare du Nord? What's not wrong with it?

Dirty, badly laid out, cramped and inadequate E* concourse, not located in a nice area......
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I stayed in a hotel down the road from there seemed fine

Lots of police with guns around to
 
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