Rail Engineer’s series of articles on the creation of the modern railway has so far covered motive power, permanent way, and signalling. Each of these physical assets are self-evidently essential for a railway system to function at all. Perhaps the promoters, developers, and funders of the first early railways gave less attention to the needs of their passengers in terms of the provision of what subsequently became known as stations. It certainly seems that way, judging by accounts of early railway travel.
Initially there was no thought given as to how to access the wagon, or better still, the carriage, with passengers having to clamber up from ground level as best they could. At a small station in Kent, planks of wood were offered for access to the carriage floor level. As for toilets, everyone had to make their own arrangements. To buy a ticket, in most cases you would get it at the local pub. Waiting rooms, refreshment facilities, booking offices, station toilets, newspaper kiosks, and train information would come later.
Eventually, of course, the full needs of the passenger, or customer, as is today’s preferred term, became recognised. More was needed than simply a seat on a train to get from A to B. Providing basic comforts could enhance the travelling experience and even lead to repeat custom. But progress towards this improved situation seems to have been slow.
Obviously, the foregoing observations apply largely to wayside and intermediate stations and not to the more considered and carefully designed major stations, such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the first great London termini, Euston and King’s Cross. But for the early lines, such as the Liverpool and Manchester, even the termini stations lacked some of those basic facilities which would later be the norm.
The first stations
Until recently, it was thought that the 1830-built Liverpool Road station in Manchester, on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first ‘proper’ station. But recent heritage investigations at Heighington on the Stockton and Darlington Railway have shown that it was open from 1825 or 1827.
Once it was realised that stations could be an important part of the railway experience for passengers, various facilities began to be added to improve those stations already in existence or, in the case of new stations, to be thoughtfully incorporated into the original design. Certainly, this is what happened for major terminal or interchange stations which gave great opportunities for the railway architects to not only create impressive, imposing and aesthetically pleasing buildings as viewed externally, but also to make imaginative and efficient use of the spaces inside those buildings.
Refreshment rooms for passengers appeared early on, the first possibly being in Birmingham at the Grand Junction Railway’s terminus, in 1837. Refreshment facilities were mostly for the use of passengers starting their journeys or changing trains, but there were some locations where long distance trains would stop for 10 or 20 minutes to allow passengers on board to dismount and purchase a meal. There are apocryphal tales alleging when there had been insufficient time for the meal to be consumed, unscrupulous catering staff might recycle leftovers for further customers.
Even medium size stations for country towns such as Leamington Spa might have beautifully decorated and embellished refreshment rooms, spacious booking halls, and adequate lavatories. The larger stations, in addition to these enhancements, would also begin to boast left luggage rooms, a lost property office, and maybe a separate ladies’ waiting room. A good example of architectural splendour being deployed to the ultimate is at Waterloo with its rebuilt station being opened in 1922. This was an opportunity to make dramatic improvements to a station that had evolved unsatisfactorily over many extensions and rebuildings. There was a large luggage hall and an enormous booking hall, with a floor of coloured glass tiles creating a feeling of airiness and spaciousness. Ladies’ toilets adjacent to their waiting rooms included a bath and dressing rooms. There were numerous refreshment facilities along and above the 700-feet-long and spaciously wide concourse, including a ladies’ cafe and the Surrey Dining Room, which could seat 150 guests and was also available to hire for private functions. Overall, this new Waterloo set a standard that was rarely matched again.
Initially, most railway companies saw the movement of goods as being a more reliable source of income than the transport of passengers. It soon became apparent that it was the other way around, but nevertheless it was recognised that operationally it was essential to have facilities for unloading and loading goods traffic at all but the very smallest stations.
For the major terminal and interchange stations, significant goods yards had to be constructed conveniently close to the passenger parts of the stations. Building of these passenger terminals, such as St. Pancras, King’s Cross, and Euston had already required massive areas of poorer housing to be purchased, residents evicted, and the areas cleared. The ensuing acquisition of even more swathes of land for development of the freight facilities caused another round of turmoil and social unrest.
Architectural styles
With so many lines being built, the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s must have been an exciting time for young aspiring architects and engineers. Railway companies, anxious not to alienate their passengers with the wrong sort of building style, often favoured the Italianate or Gothic style rather than the contemporary Victorian. But there was a full spectrum of styles.
With the novelty of the steam train, there was a desire to calm passengers’ potential fears by presenting station ambiences that were as ordinary and familiar as possible in the rural environment, and impressive in the large towns and cities. This resulted in station styles ranging from small cottages, through to country manor houses, and even on to ducal palaces.
Care was often taken, particularly in rural or village locations, to design the station to be sympathetic to the local vernacular architecture. Wateringbury in Kent, (1844), is a classic example, along with its adjacent station master’s house. Brocklesbury in Lincolnshire, (1848), is near to the country seat of the Earl of Yarborough, who was Chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, so why not design a station building to match the house?
There are plenty of urban or semi-urban examples as well. Cupar in Fife (1847) has a striking station building done in the Italianate style. Windsor and Eton Riverside (1857) and Hampton Court (1849) stations were made to reflect their royal companion buildings not very far away. Bath station as well as the associated retaining walls, tunnels, bridges, and viaducts over the River Avon were all carefully specified by Brunel in Bath stone.
Often, great attention was paid to minute details of decoration, rather than simply providing utilitarian buildings. An attractive example is the coloured sculptures on the capitals of the roof support columns at Great Malvern (1862).
Major stations
Country and small-town stations were the architect’s preserve, but providing much larger stations suitable for cities or major interchanges required the combined expertise of engineers and architects. More was needed than aesthetically pleasing buildings. Large span train sheds and often multiple level structures had to be well designed structures. But equal attention was given to architectural detail as well as to engineering considerations. They have stood the test of time and today we can still appreciate such impressive buildings as St. Pancras, Newcastle Central, Edinburgh Waverley, Manchester Victoria, Paddington, and many others.
It is rightfully claimed that Great Britain gave birth to the railway, but that expertise soon spread internationally. So, there are many magnificent large station buildings worldwide. Just to mention a few: Milan Central, Gare du Nord, Gare de Lyon, Grand Central in New York, Leipzig, Delhi Junction, Frankfurt, Dresden.
Early noted engineers and architects were Joseph Locke, Robert Stephenson, Philip Hardwick, Lewis Cubitt, John Dobson, Isambard Brunel, and John Fowler, some of whom made significant contributions to railway developments abroad.
Sadly, hundreds of former stations became disused through being sited on a closed line or by becoming uneconomic with insufficient passenger numbers. In the former case, many have had a new lease of life by, for example, conversion to residential properties or finding use as a community facility. Closed stations on lines that are still operational are obviously less likely to find such suitable reuse, but many remain because they are listed buildings of specific architectural merit. In this case, there can occasionally be a happy outcome, as with the recent reopening of the line from Crediton to Okehampton.
Rivalries
During the railway mania of the 1830s and 1840s, the rivalry between railway companies competing for business over similar routes is well known, leading to the creation of many duplicated lines. But stations in themselves could be the cause of many disputes with consequent inefficiencies and confusion for passengers. A simple example of this behaviour is the case of Liverpool Exchange station, opened in 1850. It was owned jointly by the Lancashire & Yorkshire (LYR) and the East Lancashire Railways (ELR) which, as with most things, were unable to agree on arrangements for sharing this facility. So, they provided two of everything – booking offices, waiting rooms, refreshment rooms and even names! The LYR called the station Exchange, but for the ELR it was Tithebarn Street. The problem was resolved when the companies amalgamated in 1859.
A more serious example of competitiveness came with the evolution of London’s Victoria station. The original station built by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was constructed on the western side of the site. Initially, three other companies, primarily the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, were keen to use the site but there was insufficient capacity. They were able to obtain Parliamentary permission for a second station to the east of the first station, and it was operated as a completely independent enterprise. This was separated from the ‘Brighton’ station by a boundary party wall for its whole length.
For passengers new to Victoria, this would have caused plenty of confusion as they would not have been aware which of the two stations served their destination. It was not until after the 1923 Grouping that the newly formed Southern Railway made passageways through the party wall and unified Victoria station.
There must have been many other cases of unnecessary problems caused by inter-company rivalry, but perhaps one of the most serious, which led to ongoing operational difficulties almost up to the present day, is that of London Bridge. It is a complicated story.
The first station at this site was a very makeshift affair constructed by the London and Greenwich Railway as the terminus for their new line at the end of the impressive 851-arch viaduct, the land acquisition for which, and the construction of, is a story in itself, bringing the route into London from Deptford and Bermondsey.
The London and Croydon Railway (L&C) had acquired Parliamentary authority for proposals to connect with the London and Greenwich (L&G). It wanted to make use of the first mile or two of the viaduct before forking southwards on its route to Croydon. However, it needed its own station and negotiated with the L&G to obtain a parcel of land for this.
The L&G, with the intention of keeping the L&C forever constrained by the use of its viaduct, granted the L&C a site to the north of its own station. Although the station that the L&C built was more imposing than the original L&G one, the efficient operation of its services was compromised by the need for all its trains to cross the other company’s trains to reach their own route. To alleviate this problem, the L&C eventually had to abandon its part of London Bridge station and construct its own new station at Bricklayers Arms to the south-west along with a one-and-a-quarter mile new line to access it. In 1844, this became the original London terminus of the South Eastern and the L&C Railways.
Bricklayers Arms was used for passengers until 1852 when a train derailed and demolished a column supporting part of the roof. After that it was turned into a heavily used freight depot, though for a while Queen Victoria continued to find it conveniently close to Buckingham Palace for her trips to Brighton. With the demise of Bricklayers Arms, the South Eastern reverted to London Bridge, building itself a completely new station, but with a high wall screening it from the London, Brighton and South Coast’s area. This was the final stage of the making of the operational difficulties caused by the inter-company rivalry, which then persisted for well over a century. Finally, London Bridge has only very recently become an impressive interchange as a result of a sweeping rationalisation and refurbishment of the entire site. It is now a pleasant environment with good passenger information, a spacious lower-level concourse with good access to all platforms, and new retail outlets.
London’s termini
Many books have covered the origin and subsequent history of London’s major terminal stations in great detail. Here, it is proposed only to draw out one or two interesting and/or common features.
First, a Royal Commission was set up and reported in 1846 to define the geographical limitations to which any railway would be allowed to penetrate into the built-up area. Several companies aspired to reach much closer to the West End and the City than they were, in fact, able to. Eventually, somehow the South Eastern and the London, Brighton and South Coast crossed the Thames and established themselves at Victoria, Charing Cross and Cannon Street in 1860, 1864, and 1866 respectively.
Earlier, the London & Birmingham, the Great Northern, and the Great Western had to be satisfied with remaining north of Euston Road, or New Road, as it was then. However, all three companies were able to build magnificent stations to display their importance. The designers were Lewis Cubitt for King’s Cross, Philip Hardwick for Euston, and Brunel for Paddington. Each station had very individual styles, but all had the common feature of separate arrival and departure platforms and a wide central cab road. Also, despite the massive areas of destruction and clearance needed to create them, the volume of traffic expected had been seriously underestimated and all had further extensions built to give adequate capacity.
In Euston’s case, this was particularly unfortunate for its future. A magnificent Great Hall, with a shareholders’ room above, had been positioned to the west of the first platforms. More platforms were later provided to the west of the Great Hall and the only other area for increasing capacity was to the north of the Great Hall, making platforms there necessarily short. These factors were no doubt contributory to the decision of British Railways to build a completely new station in the 1960s. The unsuccessful fight to preserve or relocate the Doric arch fronting the station and its attendant lodges is well known. Less well known is the loss of the Great Hall.
It was originally proposed that Paddington would be sited alongside Euston on its western boundary. This was logical as the obvious ways out of London for both companies’ routes were, for the first mile or two, alongside each other. Had this taken place, there would have been no room at all for Euston to expand, but the Great Western instead chose the Paddington site, which proved ideal in many respects. It was the first of the great terminal stations to make the most of both its location and the available space.
All three companies had to establish temporary termini further out of London before acquiring and developing their prime permanent locations: Great Northern at Maiden Lane, London & Birmingham at Camden, and Great Western at Bishop’s Bridge.
Innovation and evolution
Over the past 30 years many ‘Parkway’ stations have been devised, usually as completely new stations but sometimes as adaptations of existing ones. This initiative has boosted rail usage and benefited many local communities.
While many stations have been added to or adapted over the years according to changes in ownership, traffic patterns, new route proposals, or simply for economic reasons, there have been some great recent examples of the innovative use of very historic stations.
The obvious examples are those catering to the Channel Tunnel traffic. The award-winning design by Nicholas Grimshaw to provide the Eurostar platforms and terminal facilities at the western edge of Waterloo in 1994 was superb. This was followed, after these platforms had lain fallow for around 11 years, by their imaginative development to provide five additional platforms for the South Western services, creating significant extra capacity and flexibility of operation at Waterloo.
The repurposing of St. Pancras to allow Eurostar trains to relocate there in 2007 must be one of the most inspiring stories in the history of stations. Building a new terminal for the East Midlands services to the north, extending the existing platforms to full Eurostar train length with a stylish modern roof, refurbishing the original 1868 roof and buildings to a very high standard, and utilising the former under-station vaults (the Burton beer delivery area) for retail outlets, passenger departure lounge ,and arrival area, showed imagination of the highest order.
Blackfriars new station, located on its bridge across the Thames, is a clear display of a whole new suite of train services. The first railway entrepreneurs wanted to bring their services to the very centre of London, but planning regulations prevented them. Now, with the Elizabeth Line and Thameslink intersecting at Faringdon, a situation close to that aspiration has been achieved.
Curzon Street, Birmingham, was where the Grand Junction and the London & Birmingham Railways met in 1848. The main entrance building, with Grade I listed status, has been protected for many years. With the arrival of HS2 at this location, it will be sensitively incorporated into those new surroundings, possibly as a museum, and bringing the stations’ story full circle.
Image credit: AdobeStock
