In article ,
Chris Johns wrote:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Stephen Furley wrote:

Just about every American station I've seen, and I admit I haven't seen very
many, is horrible at track level. At Newark Penn the tracks are at an
elevated level, and the platforms are terrible; the edges are breaking up in
places, and have been roughly repaired by thick plates of some sort of thick
material fixed over the worst places, and providing something for people to
trip over. At EWR airport station, built just a few ears ago, the platforms
are very narrow, I would say dangerously so, where there are buildings on
them. New York Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal are both much worse
than Euston at platform level, though they are nice at concourse level.
Poughkeepsie (I'm not even sure how to pronounce that) is a nice smaller
station.

I think it's somehting like "Pur-kip-see".

I didn't get off the train at Newark, but from the window it did look
like it was falling down.

NYP reminded me was a bit like a big Liverpool Street (modern looking busy
but not that exciting above the track level, and dark and dingy down by
the trains) and Grand Central Terminal has a really nice big hall, but is
truly awful at platform level.

Boston South was the best of a bad bunch at track level of the ones I went
to.

Yep. Boston South seemed the best of the bunch on the eastern corridor
when I last did the trip (gosh, about 10 years ago...). Would have liked
it to have had a circulating area as nice (and as warm) as Grand Central
(or Euston), mined. It was damned cold last time I was in Boston.

--
Andy Breen ~ Speaking for myself, not the University of Wales
"your suggestion rates at four monkeys for six weeks"
(Peter D. Rieden)

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Andrew Robert Breen wrote:

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 1 Feb 2009, Neil Williams wrote:

On Sun, 1 Feb 2009 14:39:11 -0000, "solar penguin"
wrote:

That's one thing that St Pancras only managed to get right with the
latest redevelopment, giving us that new basement-level shopping mall
and concourse, tucked nicely away from the trains.

I find it claustrophobic compared with Euston's high-ceilinged Great
Hall, which is certainly deserving of the name.

Hmm. Big Hall, possiby. There's nothing very Great about it.

?

In fact, boggle.

The Great Hall at Euston is a glorious space. With some of the retail
clutter cleared away (as I hear it has been - can't wait to see the
results) it should be the magnificent, uplifting space it should be.
Lovely bit of architecture - and the materials used were superb.

It's a featureless cuboid.

Well, so's the golden ratio..

It absolutely does the job of being a station,
but apart from that, it does nothing at all.

Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength here - are we talking about
this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._concourse.jpg

(now minus some of the shops)

?

Yep. That's the place. A real gem.

--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)

In article ,
Neil Williams wrote:
On 2 Feb, 14:02, Tom Anderson wrote:

Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength here - are we talking about
this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on_station_con...

Yep. Spacious, airy, practical and warm. Everything that a number of
other main termini are not.

King's Cross, you mean? Also gorgeous architectually, but a brute of a
place to actually use..

--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2 Feb, 15:01, Mark Goodge wrote:

Which food outlets?

The Pasty Shop, and I forget what was on the other side. They've moved
outside the station into temporary units.

Where the number of food places has increased - there's now also a
sausage-in-a-bun shop (small sausages, large prices, didn't seem to be
doing a roaring trade) and some other things.

tom

--
Tubes are the foul subterranean entrails of the London beast, stuffed
with the day's foetid offerings. -- Tokugawa

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2 Feb, 14:02, Tom Anderson wrote:

Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength here - are we talking about
this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on_station_con...

Yep. Spacious, airy, practical and warm. Everything that a number of
other main termini are not.

Interesting, no, but then that's not what it's there for.

Yes, i'd agree with that. It's functional - especially now the shops have
been thinned out - but nothing more.

I think the layout could be better - heading into or out from the
underground station, i often get caught in flows heading the wrong way,
and have to fight my way across them. A problem i never have at Liverpool
Street, Victoria, etc.

On top of that, the station could be much prettier, and make better use of
the land, but those are merely icing on the cake of functionality.

(now minus some of the shops)

All 3 of the "teepee" like ones around the pillars visible on the photo
above have gone. Makes quite a difference.

Yes, it felt like almost a different place when i first went there after
the rearrangement.

tom

--
Tubes are the foul subterranean entrails of the London beast, stuffed
with the day's foetid offerings. -- Tokugawa

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Andrew Robert Breen wrote:

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Andrew Robert Breen wrote:

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 1 Feb 2009, Neil Williams wrote:

On Sun, 1 Feb 2009 14:39:11 -0000, "solar penguin"
wrote:

That's one thing that St Pancras only managed to get right with the
latest redevelopment, giving us that new basement-level shopping mall
and concourse, tucked nicely away from the trains.

I find it claustrophobic compared with Euston's high-ceilinged Great
Hall, which is certainly deserving of the name.

Hmm. Big Hall, possiby. There's nothing very Great about it.

?

In fact, boggle.

The Great Hall at Euston is a glorious space. With some of the retail
clutter cleared away (as I hear it has been - can't wait to see the
results) it should be the magnificent, uplifting space it should be.
Lovely bit of architecture - and the materials used were superb.

It's a featureless cuboid.

Well, so's the golden ratio..

Well, no it isn't, it's a dimensionless irrational number, but IKWM, but
then it's also not a building. You can use the golden ratio in the making
of aesthetically pleasing buildings, but you need much more than that. The
idea that you only need geometry was tried out fairly thoroughly between
the 30s and 60s, and the fairly emphatic conclusion was that that that
doesn't work.

It absolutely does the job of being a station, but apart from that, it
does nothing at all.

Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength here - are we talking about
this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._concourse.jpg

(now minus some of the shops)

?

Yep. That's the place. A real gem.

Well, de gustibus non est disputandum, but i can assure you that you're
utterly wrong.

tom

--
Tubes are the foul subterranean entrails of the London beast, stuffed
with the day's foetid offerings. -- Tokugawa

In message , at 20:30:00 on Sun, 1
Feb 2009, Sarah Brown remarked:
a windswept 1950's loo-wall structure built entirely
outside the original station, and a route-march from the rest of
humanity.

Windswept is good, given the diesel fumes.

Not when the wind is blowing driving rain onto the platform!
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 21:49:03 on Sun,
1 Feb 2009, Neil Williams remarked:
[1] It's a pity that M&S Food[2] seem to have an almost-monopoly on
station supermarkets, though. A small Tesco or Sainsbury's would be a
lot more useful

That's unlikely because the M&S Food shops at major stations are
actually a franchise operated by the same people as operate almost all
the other food outlets, and appear to have a monopoly.
--
Roland Perry

On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:08:56 +0000, Andrew Robert Breen put finger to
keyboard and typed:

In article ,
Neil Williams wrote:
On 2 Feb, 14:02, Tom Anderson wrote:

Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength here - are we talking about
this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on_station_con...

Yep. Spacious, airy, practical and warm. Everything that a number of
other main termini are not.

King's Cross, you mean? Also gorgeous architectually, but a brute of a
place to actually use..

Kins Cross suffers badly from a combination of the split between the
main and suburban train sheds and creeping retailisation on the
concourse. The new concourse ought to improve both of those, at least
a bit.

It does seem that TPTB have woken up to the idea that filling every
available bit of floor space with retail units isn't actually a good
idea - they get in the way of people who don't want to use them, and
at busy times the crowds of travellers get in the way of those who do
want to use them.

Mark
--
A Miscellany Of Good Stuff:
http://www.good-stuff.co.uk
http://namestore.good-stuff.co.uk
http://news.good-stuff.co.uk

"Mark Goodge" wrote in message
house.net...

It does seem that TPTB have woken up to the idea that filling every
available bit of floor space with retail units isn't actually a good
idea - they get in the way of people who don't want to use them, and
at busy times the crowds of travellers get in the way of those who do
want to use them.


That is certainly apparent at Waterloo. A fairly large number of food
outlets have disappeared with the barrier project, and you can see the
trains again. I haven't noticed any major delays in getting a coffee etc
though, so they must have been a bit overprovisioned previously.

Paul S