The Art Deco joy of Surbiton station

[editor]

It rally is a beaut:

In photos: the modernist swagger of Surbiton station – an Art Deco masterpiece in London

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It's a striking station, with a pretty good burger van out the front too. Not very appealing at 8am on a wet December Monday when the platforms get so crowded there's danger of getting pushed on to the tracks

 

[Teaboy]

Externally Richmond station is very similar, though its in need of a bit of love. Internally though its not as pretty. What there is are some cool BR posters from the 80's on display, such as:

 

[skyscraper101]

Used Surbiton quite a bit earlier this year. It's certainly a lovely building, in need of a bit of a paint job, but still grand.

 

[Poi E]

Externally Richmond station is very similar, though its in need of a bit of love. Internally though its not as pretty. What there is are some cool BR posters from the 80's on display, such as:

What I love is that in the second box the instructions for open do not match with the graphic on the left hand side. Very UK.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

Love the "To The Trains" lettering over the stairs.

Gorgeous station. We don't have so much Art Deck Architecture in Ireland....

Dublin has a few nice buildings...


Dublin Institute of Technology...1939

 

[cybershot]

Looks more like an old cinema! (the OP)

 

[Leafster]

I guess it's a major aspect in the way we use railway stations that we rarely stop to look closely at them - we're always in a hurry to be somewhere else or catch that train before it leaves. I've used Surbiton Station numerous times over the years but never really noticed the fine architecture.

 

[existentialist]

It rally is a beaut:

That was my local (mainline) station, and for a good 20 years, that ceiling was a mouldering spectacle of peeling paint and neglect. They had just tarted it all up shortly before I moved to Wales - it's lovely to see it looking so good.

Platform 2, by virtue of the number of non-stopping trains that pass through it, has an unenviable reputation as a place where quite a few suicide attempts happen.

 

[editor]

Love the "To The Trains" lettering over the stairs.

It's very reminiscent of American stations.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Platform 2, by virtue of the number of non-stopping trains that pass through it, has an unenviable reputation as a place where quite a few suicide attempts happen.

Wimbledon had the same, they've put barriers up now, but at Surbiton you do get the odd train stopping there, so they can't.

From Walton-on-Thames to Victoria had to change at Surbiton, then squeeze on to a packed stopping service to Clapham, then change to Victoria. Just one of the many, many things I hated about working in Victoria!

 

[davesgcr]

Back in BR days , you had a proper Station Manager , and several shift assistants. A job to covet I tell you.

Oak leaf cluster caps and all.

 

[tim]

Starting point for the Waterloo Bridge Handicap, a short film in which Leonard Rossiter, in Reggie Perrinesque form, participates in competitive commuting.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

hadn't realised that the southern's brief foray in to art deco (ending with the restrained examples on what ended up as the Chessington Branch) was the work of the same architect, James Robb-Scott, as the Victory Arch at Waterloo, and the generation of 1920s stations like Bromley North

(and I think there are one or two missing from the list of his stations on wikipedia)

 

[mx wcfc]

I go through Surbiton once or twice a week, but far too fast to generally take it in. It does look superb from the fast train though. Are there any decent pubs in the vicinity, that would justify getting a slow train and having a proper look and a beer on the way home?

 

[existentialist]

I go through Surbiton once or twice a week, but far too fast to generally take it in. It does look superb from the fast train though. Are there any decent pubs in the vicinity, that would justify getting a slow train and having a proper look and a beer on the way home?

I could probably reel off a list of names, but they'd be 15 years out of date. Surbiton was my stamping ground.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

on tweeter today

 

[Puddy_Tat]

and another today



the lamp posts and boundary walls would almost certainly have been made 'in house' at the Southern's concrete works at Exmouth - a small collection of photos of Exmouth products here

 

[Griff]

Always liked Loughton station. Probably something the locals are unaware of...

 

[existentialist]

Always liked Loughton station. Probably something the locals are unaware of...

Off-topic. Post reported.

 

[weltweit]

Always liked Loughton station. Probably something the locals are unaware of...

Yes, I used to use that, the picture must have been taken at dawn as usually there are taxis and buses cluttering it up.

 

[existentialist]

Yes, I used to use that, the picture must have been taken at dawn as usually there are taxis and buses cluttering it up.

I think it was probably taken at 1950.

 

[OzT]

Always liked Loughton station. Probably something the locals are unaware of...

If you know Loughton then you're appreciate the fact that the station used to actually end at Cafe Rogue, that's where the trains were kept and workshops there, as Loughton was the terminus for the line.

Station also feathure in a black and white clip, with steam trains and everything, in a docco I saw about the start of Metro Land, Loughton being one of them

 

[Farmer Giles]

I go through Surbiton once or twice a week, but far too fast to generally take it in. It does look superb from the fast train though. Are there any decent pubs in the vicinity, that would justify getting a slow train and having a proper look and a beer on the way home?

My local station. Decent Fullers pub "The Flyer" next door to station, a spoons across the road in an old synagogue, and oddball but in a good way "The Lamb" a five minute walk away.

 

[existentialist]

My local station. Decent Fullers pub "The Flyer" next door to station, a spoons across the road in an old synagogue, and oddball but in a good way "The Lamb" a five minute walk away.

My use of Surbiton as stamping ground largely predated "The Flyer" (which used to be Barclays Bank, IIRC). And, unless the 'spoons has moved, that was the old Ritz cinema - it wasn't ever a synagogue, though that big Star of David might be a bit of a misleading clue!

My old pub was the Southampton, which used to be in the building at the base of the tower block - that went in about 1990.

 

[Farmer Giles]

The 'star' and some local's beer banter have misled me about the spoons history. Happy to be corrected.

 

[existentialist]

The 'star' and some local's beer banter have misled me about the spoons history. Happy to be corrected.

I saw the Yardbirds at the Ritz, in about 1984. Well, I say "Yardbirds" - it was a superannuated Chris Dreja and some hangers-on.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

a spoons across the road in an old synagogue

that was the old Ritz cinema - it wasn't ever a synagogue, though that big Star of David might be a bit of a misleading clue!

built 1911 as the Coronation Hall cinema, later Roxy and Ritz. Then bingo then a 'naturist health club'

More here.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

turnip rail on tweeter has posted another one today, complete with 1930s taxis

(1938, from national archives collection)

 

[existentialist]

turnip rail on tweeter has posted another one today, complete with 1930s taxis

(1938, from national archives collection)

Some impressively art deco flats in the background. I used to deliver newspapers to them when I was about 14. The stairs!