Sleaford, Spalding and Skegness deserve a mention.
Sleaford has one room dedicated to the local station maintenance teams collection of Regional Railways signage and obsolete BR station bins, with some chalk boards and a goods ticket from Blankney station before it closed the first time round on the wall plus a poster from the 80s of the Tetley Tea Folk next to it. The seat is (I kid you not) a Victorian bench rescued from the waiting room and a poorly boarded up fireplace lets in all the draughts.
Bar your very last point, I fail to see anything wrong with any of that.
A rusty tea strainer hung above the sink until recently.
Oxted has the world's finest collection of derelict 1990s cutlery, tasteless mugs used for tasteless liquid, and a BR clock which only works on Tuesdays in February.
You have to use the a key to walk up the platform to the public bog.
At East Croydon, the toilet ceilings may not be looked at, lest they fall upon you.
(At Brighton, you need a map, compass and 3 days' rations.)
Spalding is full of 1970s tables and chairs. A door leads to the derelict station building. There's a cupboard full of weedkiller next to it. The staff toilet is the fairly recently abandoned public gents which is architecturally impressive with a nice skylight but has an unboarded fireplace and is full of shopping trolleys etc.
Did you know that one corner of the gents in the station staff messroom at Guildford is the original source of all the blue roll dispensed throughout the National Network?
Skegness is a windowless room shared with the electrical distribution point in a large cage with utterly undrinkable water.
See also: Victoria.
Does the water at Skegness run through the electrical distribution system?
Rarely if ever are any of them cleaned.
I think you will find that this was covered in the 1884 Restructuring Agreement, page 97.
It does state quite clearly that Britain's railway messrooms will have fresh newspaper (straw in the West Country) relaid every 3 years, and that the cupboards will be fumigated every 15.
This does not apply to those messrooms only used by the drivers of freight trains, where newspaper is swapped for impenetrable amounts of oil.
I'm delighted to hear that London Victoria is still full of miserable and unfriendly 'persons', I assumed that 20 years after last visiting that welcoming snake pit that things would have changed, obviously not
"Can't sit there that's Gatwick Express/South Eastern/South Central/Drivers with over 90 years service" etc etc
Couldn't and can't beat the camaraderie of railway brothers and sisters
You can sit at the table by the vending machine next time (if it's still there - I don't actually visit some of these places terribly often...).
london bridge was bad, haven't been in the new one
Soulless but not unpleasant, now the electrics have (mostly) been fixed and don't torture you with accidental strobe lighting. Ominous signage everywhere. Glass door to the kitchen has only fallen on a driver once. Vending machine will not have your preferred drink, or indeed any. All access doors impenetrable.
