Can modern rail travel ever truly recapture its glorious past?
Simon Jenkins has previously explored England’s Thousand Best Churches and his latest hymn praises railway stations. Journalist Jenkins takes his readers on a well-illustrated journey around the network.
He even tells a resurrection story of how “the grandest station” St Pancras conquered death after closure and the threat of demolition to become the gateway to Europe. It is a metaphor for a system struggling to cope with rising demand more than 50 years after Doctor Beeching seemingly certified its demise.
Jenkins gives York and its distinctive curved roof the tag of “most lovable” provincial station ahead of listed gem Newcastle.
Wemyss Bay Station on Glasgow’s Forth of Clyde, James Miller’s masterpiece, is considered a work of art. Modern stations such as Canary Wharf get due credit, but Jenkins suggests the way forward for rail is to respect its history.
Carnforth station was immortalised in the black-and-white 1945 classic film Brief Encounter - about a doomed adulterous affair centred on the station’s refreshment room. Nowadays the station in Lancashire hosts what at first seems to be a collection of railway relics, but in fact is evidence of a fast-reviving vintage sector, a trend partly inspired by Harry Potter.
Jenkins hints that, rather like the errant wife in Brief Encounter who eventually returns to her dependable husband, the future of the railway is best secured by embracing its past.