NATIONAL RAIL AWARDS
2017 SMALL STATON OF THE YEAR
This was another hotly contested category, and the winning entry was the impressive Bicester Village station, operated by Chiltern Railways.
Bicester Village may have been entered into the Small Station category, but it has facilities that many larger stations would be envious of.
It’s now a modern two-platform station on the London Marylebone to Oxford line, but it has had something of a chequered history, having been closed in 1968, then reopened by Network SouthEast as the single-platform Bicester Town in 1987. Under Chiltern Railways, the station was closed again in 2014, but this was to allow the station to be completely rebuilt, with the newly renamed Bicester Village reopening in October 2015.
The station building is a modern concrete and glass structure, with tiled walls. The entrance booking hall is light and airy, with information desk, ticket office and ticket gates, while the platforms are linked by a steel footbridge with integral lifts. There are also two car parks serving the station, offering almost 250 car parking spaces, along with extensive facilities for bicycle storage on the station platforms.
The waiting room has comfortable seating, stools and desks with information screens, as well as plug sockets for charging phones and laptops. Another nice touch is that station staff offer a variety of books and magazines for passengers to read while waiting for their train. It’s clear that staff take great pride in maintaining the station.
The standard of the facilities at Bicester Village makes it stand out from many others of a similar size, and it shows that high standards need not be the domain of larger, more prominent stations. Chiltern has certainly set a benchmark for what can be achieved.
The Highly Commended entries under the Small Station of the Year were Templecombe, currently operated by South Western Railway (at the time of the judges’ visit it was still being managed by Stagecoach’s South West Trains) and First Great Western’s Barnstaple.