More on stations

I'm not in total agreement with Patrick Crozier.

Or take the airport. OK, so arriving there by road is a pain but once you've entered the terminal building it's a piece of cake. You check in, go through passport control, go through security, do some shopping, go to the departure gate, board your plane. Easy peasy.

Boggle? One of the big advantages of train travel is that it isn't as cumbersome as air travel. No two-hour check-ins, lengthy boarding procedures or nonsense like that. As for shops and facilities, how many railway stations in Britain deal with the same number of passengers daily as an airport? And what proportion of those passengers arrive an hour before their train is due to depart?

I travelled from Slough to Manchester today, and experienced four stations (and three trains) in the process. I thought about yesterday's comments as I travelled.

Slough: Arrived about 15 minutes before the train was due. There's nothing in terms of passenger facilities at all on platform 2 - There is a buffet, but it's on the wrong side of the revenue protection barriers. There's another one (when it's open) on platform 5 over the bridge. There's also no gents loo on that platform; you have to cross the bridge to platform 5 again. Room for improvement here.

Oxford: I waited about 35 minutes here, due to a missed connection (for once it was Thames Trains, not Virgin, that was to blame - the Virgin Cross-Country train I'd planned to catch had left on time for once). This is a fairly simple station with two main platforms; I had time for a coffee in the buffet on platform 2. There are a number of shops in the concourse on platform 1, but you have to pass through the revenue protection barrier to get to them (which means I technically broke the journey, which I was allowed to do on my ticket). The bridge linking the two platforms is wide, covered and non-flimsy, and supplied with a passenger lift on both sides. Also the freight lines through the middle are good for taking photographs; I got a good shot of Freightliner's 66520 on the Avon Bin-Liners.

Crewe: My original itinery didn't include a change here; but since I'd missed the direct train from Oxford to Manchester I ended up on the Portsmouth to Liverpool as far as Crewe. This was one of the few trains where a Voyager is a definite improvement on what had gone before; the four car class 220 unit was well-filled, and the passengers would never have fitted in the 2-car 158 they'd previously used on this service. Crewe is a confusing station which had grown piecemeal in Victorian times, with platforms all over the place. Again there's a substantial covered bridge with a lift at each end, although I found the lift on platform 6 hard to find.

Finally, Manchester Piccadilly. Thanks to the Commonwealth Games it's got a shiny new concourse with a growing number of shops, which they've managed to fit in without putting one of those infernal concrete rafts over the platform. The blend of modern and Victorian works, and the 19th century train shed looks a lot better than it must have been in the days of steam. To me, this place is a template for how a major railway terminal should look.