I realise that may not be the most enticing opening sentence you've ever read, but I'm hoping the warm, honey-glow of the brickwork, or the vast glazed span of the trainshed roof, will persuade you to stick with me for a bit.
Here's the station as it was 105 years ago -- not much different, you might think.
But in the mid-twentieth century the station fell on very hard times -- half that roof disappeared and the structural walls on each side had deteriorated badly. This is what it looked like when I first encountered it, in the early 1980s:
I'm no expert but I'd suggest, as a general rule, that where corrugated iron has been used as a material to effect repairs then, generally, the structure is not likely to be in good shape.
In fact, things got so bad that it was proposed to demolish it altogether. The ultra-modern Wessex Electric waiting at the platform is in sharp contrast to the decay all around it:
In this earlier shot, the vast gap down the middle of the roof can be seen:
And, in this even earlier shot (mid-1960s, I'd guess), the shabby nature of the station is obvious:
Fortunately for us a campaign to save the station was launched, and a huge investment was made in stabilising the walls and constructing an entirely new roof:
The brickwork and the iron structure was all beautifully repaired:
Another Wessex Electric sits much more happily in these surroundings:
For a period in my life (before the station was restored) I spent many hours on the platforms of Bournemouth Central station, waiting for a Wessex Electric to speed me back to Southampton:
Sometimes, if you were unlucky and it was too late, you'd have to catch some lesser machine from the bay platform (on the other side from this lovely old restored Western):
Bournemouth station always struck me as an odd design, and the station with which I most closely associate it is in, of all places, Berlin:
This is, of course, Zoologischer Garten station in Berlin (or, if you're a local, Bf Berlin Zoo), a place I first encountered at the height of the Cold War when, in extraordinarily romantic circumstances, Zoo Gardens was the main international station in isolated West Berlin.
The square structure of the train shed was a radical replacement, from the 1930s, of the original rather more traditional structure:
Although even there the aesthetic advantage of siting your station on a viaduct can clearly be seen.
The opening of the new central station in unified Berlin has left Zoo Gardens a quiet backwater (just one international train continues to use it -- although in fairness that's the extraordinarily romantic Siberian express).
I prefer to think of Zoo Gardens in its hey-day, at the epicentre of free Berlin, a symbol of movement and travel.
I confess, when I was there I didn't spend too much time thinking about Bournemouth.
1 comment:
That solitary green-drab carriage with its grey roof reminds me of the Berlin-bound train from the Hook of Holland in the late 1950s: if you were travelling beyond Helmstedt you'd be locked into the carriage with a VoPo (member of the "People's Police") for the stretch through Magdeburg and East Germany - all very thrilling for an impressionable schoolboy!
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