Enjoyable walk yesterday on the scenic Macclesfield canal with some pals and used two of the stations on the route, Kidsgrove and Congleton to access the canal.
Kidsgrove station is a quite a large grotty station, with four platforms and a run down, rusty footbridge to access three of the platforms, there doesn’t appear to be any step free access to those platforms. The entrance area to the station is scruffy and generally unloved, mind you Kidsgrove town centre didn’t look any better, so perhaps the station is in keeping with its surroundings, and as for the adjacent Railway pub…
Fast forward to Congleton, a well heeled Cheshire town and the area surrounding the station ‘Hightown’ is very smart with a fantastic pub opposite the station, Queens Head, excellent food and local ales…but Congleton station is a dump, a tiny concrete overhang for a waiting area, the station is dreary, paint peeling off all the buildings and the even the electronic PIS display wasn’t showing train departure information, and the electronic clock on the display unit was 20 minutes fast!
If it's any comfort, Kidsgrove has been like that since I first used it in 1964!
It's worse now they make Crewe-Stoke trains stop at the far west end of the platform, making a long walk from the entrance.
The canal scenery at the end of Harecastle canal tunnel is impressive but ugly with brown water from the iron deposits hereabouts.
As a footnote, much of Congleton's growth and prosperity in the 1960s/70s was from employment at Kidsgrove (EE/ICL/GEC and successors).
When I worked at Kidsgrove in the 60s the pubs were full of unemployed miners; when I returned in the 90s they were full of unemployed IT folk!
The main buildings at Chester are fine, and there is nothing wrong with the surroundings although the city centre is a long walk or a bus ride away. But I don't like the rail side of the station: confusing layout and scruffy looking platforms. Arriving by Merseyrail you have to walk a fair way across a rather gloomy footbridge to get out.
A lot of money has been spent at Chester over a decade or so, and some of it is of a high quality and sympathetic to the original (eg re-glazing the roof and bridge, and the approach from the east car park).
But the new platform buildings (in sickly ATW green) are horrid, and they have not even begun to disguise the demolition work when the overall roof was dismantled, or fill the gaps in the platform awnings (one of them caused by a fire in the 1970s).
The concourse is sort of OK, and the eateries have improved, but the PIS (concourse and island) is one of the most user-unfriendly on the network.
The barrier line has reduced the circulating area and generates crowding at the bottom of the bridge steps, especially when a Merseyrail train arrives.
The mooted extra island platform for Merseyrail might be the opportunity to improve things elsewhere on the station.