Queenstown Road is on the mainline out of Waterloo, just a couple of stops from the terminus: pretty much everything that leaves Waterloo passes through this station. From the street, the original London & South Western Railway facade (with the old name of Queens Road) has been nicely preserved.
The mean-looking stairs from street level to the platforms suggest that all may not be lovely at this (unstaffed) station, though, and when you reach the platforms you realise you are in the middle of a massive railway junction with trains flying over both ends of this station as well as through it -- here we see one zooming away from Victoria:
Another railway bridge closes off the other end of the station and, underneath it, two non-stoppers from Waterloo accelerate through:
Everywhere you look is hardcore Victoria infrastructure, most of it not having seen even a whiff of paint for many decades:
Six tracks pass through this station, with four more overhead. But many of the passenger facilities have been boarded-up and fenced-in:
This is at the very heart of London (a spit from the massive new development site at Battersea Power Station, one of the biggest in Europe), yet all looks bleak and forlorn:
It's no surprise that this was the site chosen to film those wonderful scenes in My Beautiful Laundrette, where the father's flat is constantly assaulted by the rhythmic thunder of commuter trains rushing past.
3 comments:
I see your point, but it still look relatively tidy and presentable compared to some stations I know of:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8379019.stm
http://livingwithrats.blogspot.com/2009/12/welcome-to-wasteland.html
Completely agree about Wakefield, which has been an embarrassment for many years (possibly even decades... am trying to remember the first time I saw it).
Clapham Jct is interesting, too: the country's busiest station yet it is a bleak and depressing sewer, often flooded, inadequate for the sheer volumes of people who trudge through it. A new entrance has helped a little, and there are some works on the main passenger bridge, but the underpass is utterly appalling.
I'm surprised Denmark Hill made it onto one of those lists. From memory it's actually not bad. I might check it out tomorrow...
Meanwhile, if Queenstown Road looks "tidy and presentable" I haven't photographed it properly. I suspect this is because I am becoming neurotic every time I lift my camera in public (I was told off again, today, at Chiswick House, one of the most important Classical monuments in England. Apparently photography is Not Allowed).
Railway architecture not important, apparently. Who are the morons who run this railway? Philip
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