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Central Stations (Trivia)

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unlevel42

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Old maps at the NLS website show it as 'Great Central Station' or 'GC Station' as late as a 1950 edition, so that's probably another case of the name coming from the railway:

The map in the link shows that Gainsborough is next to the 'dead' centre of the Town.

Nobody has mentioned Rotherham Central yet
or Rotterdam Central- what a contrast.
 
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vlad

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Looking overseas, Ulyanovsk Central station in Russia is presumably so named as it's where all the railway lines meet. It's in an otherwise residential area nearly 5 miles south of the actual town centre.

Russia seems to have no standard way to denote a main station - in addition to "Central" you can also see "Passenger", "station 1" or even one of the places you can get to from that station (for example the main station in Nizhny Novogorod is the Moscow station).
 

Grumpy

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In the early 2000's one of the cash machines at Leeds (former City) station used to print out transaction slips showing its location as "Leeds Central Station"
 

xotGD

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Leeds Central was certainly more central than the other stations serving the city.
 

Iskra

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Leeds Central was certainly more central than the other stations serving the city.
To differentiate it from Leeds Whitehall, I assume.

Edit: sorry I quoted the wrong message, reply meant for @Grumpy above
 
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JRT

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Leeds Central was certainly more central than the other stations serving the city.
I don't remember it being particularly central? Was along Wellington Street, further along than the old coach station??
 

xotGD

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I don't remember it being particularly central? Was along Wellington Street, further along than the old coach station??
Well not central central, just more central!
 

Bevan Price

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That's true, but it is of course much less well used.

Are there any Central stations anywhere in the world misleadingly named after an operator or line (ie on the Great Central or operated by Grand Central as theoretical examples), rather than in terms of their geography?
Not quite what you wanted, but Wigan North Western was named after the former LNWR. It, and Wallgate (across the road) are about 2-3 minutes walk from the town centre, as was the now closed Wigan Central -- which was fairly basic for a terminal, because at one time there had be proposals to extend the line beyond Wigan.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Looking overseas, Ulyanovsk Central station in Russia is presumably so named as it's where all the railway lines meet. It's in an otherwise residential area nearly 5 miles south of the actual town centre.
Russia seems to have no standard way to denote a main station - in addition to "Central" you can also see "Passenger", "station 1" or even one of the places you can get to from that station (for example the main station in Nizhny Novogorod is the Moscow station).
It was quite common in Germany for early terminal stations to be "reverse named", eg the Berlin-Hamburg railway had a Berliner Bahnhof in Hamburg and a Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.
Berlin at one time had about 10 stations named after the destination of the original line (eg Potsdamer, Dresdner, Stettiner etc).
The central Stadtbahn spelt the demise of most of the original termini in Berlin.
The new Hbf, which is pretty much central in the modern city as well as being a near-perfect rail hub, is located where the Lehrter Bahnhof used to be, Lehrte being a key node on the Hanover state railway network.
 

snowball

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Not quite what you wanted, but Wigan North Western was named after the former LNWR. It, and Wallgate (across the road) are about 2-3 minutes walk from the town centre, as was the now closed Wigan Central -- which was fairly basic for a terminal, because at one time there had be proposals to extend the line beyond Wigan.

Indeed Wigan North Western is south of Wigan Wallgate.
 

norbitonflyer

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Acton must be up there in a list of places with the most prefixes and suffixes to differentiate its local stations.

Acton Central (Overground)
Acton Main Line (TfL Rail)
Acton Town (Piccadilly line)
North Acton (Central line, built by GWR)
East Acton (Central line, built by GWR)
South Acton (Overground)
West Acton (Central line, built by GWR)

Additonally, the current Chiswick Park station on the District line was opened as 'Acton Green'.
And Acton Bridge, albeit more than 100 miles from the others
 

kentuckytony

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I always think that Tunbridge Wells Central and Bexhill Central are quite grandiose. they certainly have nice buildings and plenty of platform cover, and I think they're also quite central as well. They're no longer officially called "Central" though.

Folkestone Central might not be geographically central, however it was situated between Folkestone West and Folkestone East at one stage.
I always thought Tunbridge Wells Central was a grand station back in the day years ago. A fine bit of architecture for sure.
 

yorksrob

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I always thought Tunbridge Wells Central was a grand station back in the day years ago. A fine bit of architecture for sure.

The nice thing is that apart from a shorter platform canopy, it's not changed that much anyway.
 

YorksLad12

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Leeds Central was certainly more central than the other stations serving the city.

I don't remember it being particularly central? Was along Wellington Street, further along than the old coach station??

If you take the centre of Leeds ('town') as City Square, both Wellington and New stations were more central than Central, which a five-minute walk westwards. Leeds City as it became is closer to the main retail and administrative areas than Central ever was.

Conversley, Rotherham Central is definitely more central than Masboro ever was, which is why it was reopened.
 

Wuz

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Belfast Central was never very central and the name became even less appropriate when Great Victoria Street reopened, as that is closer to the centre.
However, it took years before sense prevailed and finally Belfast Central was renamed Lanyon Place in September 2018!
 

RH Liner

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My first post on this forum, and it’s slightly off topic (good start) but on the subject of misnomers, Shirebrook station was known as ‘Shirebrook West’ when there were two other stations in Shirebrook, despite ‘West’ actually being on the eastern edge of the town.
 

LSWR Cavalier

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Shirebrook West, in the wrong place, like Wigan North Western

Moenchengladbach in Germany has two Hauptbahnhofs: Moenchengladbach Hauptbahnhof and Rheydt Hauptbahnhof
 

billio

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Radcliffe Central, previously Radcliffe New, and now Radciffe. (It would be interesting to know about stations with 'New' in the name to reflect the station was new and not named after the location of the station. Perhaps another thread.
 

Djgr

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Belfast Central was never very central and the name became even less appropriate when Great Victoria Street reopened, as that is closer to the centre.
However, it took years before sense prevailed and finally Belfast Central was renamed Lanyon Place in September 2018!
I think Belfast Central was so called because of a historic railway company rather than its somewhat off-centre location.
 

Springs Branch

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I'd always thought the reason the former Aintree Central had this suffix must have been because it was originally on the CLC system, which had a fondness for naming its station "Central" (plus associations with the Great Central).

It turns out, according to this Disused Stations article, that Aintree CLC was only named "Central" during the BR era in 1950.

On the same line, maybe the Southport & Cheshire Lines Extension Railway's terminus at Southport Lord Street should have been named Southport Central, given the station's very central location and the CLC having been the principal backers of line and operators of its trains.
Perhaps "Lord Street "was seen as a more prestigious and exclusive destination, given that nearby smoky, industrial towns like St Helens, Wigan and Widnes all had their Central stations.
 

Tomos y Tanc

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I've always thought it an oddity that none of the six historic railway terminii in Swansea none adopted the 'Central' monicker. Instead, they were named High Street (GWR), St Thomas (Midland Railway), East Dock (GWR again but a different line), Swansea (Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway), Victoria (LNWR) and Rutland Street (Mumbles Railway). High Street, the sole survivor, was arguably the most central but it was never called by that name.
 

itsonlyme

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I'd always thought the reason the former Aintree Central had this suffix must have been because it was originally on the CLC system, which had a fondness for naming its station "Central" (plus associations with the Great Central).

It turns out, according to this Disused Stations article, that Aintree CLC was only named "Central" during the BR era in 1950.

On the same line, maybe the Southport & Cheshire Lines Extension Railway's terminus at Southport Lord Street should have been named Southport Central, given the station's very central location and the CLC having been the principal backers of line and operators of its trains.
Perhaps "Lord Street "was seen as a more prestigious and exclusive destination, given that nearby smoky, industrial towns like St Helens, Wigan and Widnes all had their Central stations.
But at the opening date there already was a Southport Central

 

30907

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Many stations in Hungary (and other former Soviet bloc countries) are on the edge of town, rather than in the actual centre. Apparently this was a deliberate policy, not to do with topology, not sure of the exact reason.
Not sure how much this has to do with the Soviet era, unless there were major relocations then.
I would guess all of them were laid out in Imperial days; the fashion (no doubt influenced by the military) was for through stations rather than termini.
I don't know Hungary, but in Czechia and Slovakia through stations were built fairly close to the then town centres where possible. Kosice, Bratislava, Brno, Budejovice and Ceske Budejovice off hand (though interestingly there are other - smaller - towns which have a main and a "town" station).
 

bussikuski179

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Scandinavia has its Central (Stockholm), and Sentral (Oslo), but Hovedbanegard in Copenhagen, closer linguistically to the German Hauptbahnhof.
Speaking of Scandinavia, while not exactly Scandinavian, (we’re NORDIC, people, not Scandinavian) Finland has 2 ”Central” stations, Helsinki and Turku, though not officially named as such, are always referred to as Helsinki Central and Turku Central, or päärautatieasema in Finnish. Helsinki C is right in the center, you can’t go much more central than that. Turku however... Turku C is a good 10-15 minutes away from the center by bus, so not exactly very central. Oh and there is also Orivesi Keskusta (directly translating to Orivesi Town Center) which is a small 1 platform station with... I believe 6tpd, might be 4 nowadays, the other station called just Orivesi is a much bigger station on the Pieksämäki-Tampere mainline.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Was the one time 'Radcliffe Central' (now Radcliffe Metrolink station) ever officially known as 'Radcliffe New' or was that an unofficial designation?
 
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