Tag Archives: railway station

May 23 2012
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Daily Post, Interior, Transport

The new King’s Cross

Wednesday 23rd May 2012, 12.15pm (day 272)

King's Cross, 23/5/12

This is the new entrance at King’s Cross station in London, opened in March. I’m very impressed with it. Apart from looking damn good, it also has some nice cafes on the balcony which do not charge ludicrous prices for cups of tea (£1.50 for a cup, which is quite reasonable these days), and a good pub, which seems as if it has been there for decades. And there’s a Platform 9¾ sign (complete with a luggage trolley half-sticking out of a wall) to keep the Harry Potter fans happy.

Most of all though I’m impressed there are still people around who give enough of a toss about creating beautiful things in public life that things like this can still get built. May it continue to be the case.

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Mar 09 2012
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Daily Post, Transport

St Pancras station (the basement)

Friday 9th March 2012, 3.30pm (day 197)

St Pancras, 9/3/12
The new St Pancras station in London, terminus for the Eurostar trains, is definitely the most impressive railway station in Britain and probably ranks among the top 10 in Europe. But for those of us plebs who don’t want to catch the Eurostar, or even the cross-country services north to Sheffield, but the cross-London trains down to the South coast; we are herded down into the basement.

Still, this couple looked kinda cute. And I was only there for five minutes.

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Nov 02 2011
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Transport Gallery

Waiting for the late train, Hebden Bridge station

Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 9.00am (day 69)

Hebden Bridge station, 2/11/11

What irritates me most about the public transport in this country is not the unpunctuality (which tends to be concentrated on certain lines at certain times of the day, and after a while you just learn to avoid them – if you can, of course). No, the thing that gets me the most is the stupid ‘no growth in numbers’ contracts which the train operating companies have signed.As a result, public transport is an utterly backwards industry in which there is actually no business incentive to increase custom. (Undergraduate education is becoming another one.)

There is one, and only one, reason why such a state of affairs is tolerated: it’s because every journey by public transport represents  a little redistribution of tax income. The government like collecting tax, so encourage us to use cars, which are enormous sources of tax revenue. They don’t like paying tax back out. so don’t want us to use public transport, which is ‘subsidised’ (I call it ‘invested in’). As a result Britain has the highest public transport costs of almost any country in the world.

But despite everything, it’s still a damn sight better than using a car.

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Sep 27 2011
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Daily Post, Transport Gallery

Helsinki railway station

Tuesday 27th September 2011, 1.00pm (day 33)

Helsinki station, 27/9/11

Good morning meeting in Helsinki then off to Tampere on the train for tomorrow’s conference. Wish I could submit more than one photo of Helsinki’s superb 1930s-semi-Stalinist style railway station, but this one will have to do.

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