Railway stations, bus stations and… filling stations? The first two have made frequent appearances on the pages of this website, the third far less often. Filling stations, and their close cousins garages and car showrooms, only occasionally attract significant architectural attention. Although it can happen from time to time (there’s a list of filling stations […]

Thanet Parkway station opened on 31 July 2023, and promptly broke quite a few people’s brains. I can remember my Twitter feed (as was) being awash with commentators deriding its appearance. Even now, a simple web search will quickly turn up adjectives like “ugly”, “hideous”, “bloody ugly” and “incredibly dull-looking”. Although I assume the post […]

Finding your way around a Network Rail station is becoming another step easier. The publication of the most recent version of Network Rail’s Wayfinding design manual represents the latest step in the company’s quest to design the best possible signage system for stations. Given the ongoing moves towards re-integrating large parts of the railway network […]

One of the most enduringly popular articles on this website (at least in terms of clicks and re-posts) is a very early one, from 2013. It concerns the graphic identities created for Railtrack’s major stations by Citigate Lloyd Northover. These ones… Firstly – have I really been writing this website on and off for that […]

Well then. At the end of the last article I promised to write about the stations on HS2 phase 1 assuming that I hadn’t been too enraged by the political fallout from hopefully soon-to-be-ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak’s cancellation of phase 2 of HS2. Reader, I have been enraged. I have had to have a very […]