Manchester Piccadilly...... a new station for a new generation

I have to say that when I first went into the newly designed and refurbished concourse of Piccadilly railway station I was impressed.

Its bold open and light design seemed a world away from the drab and increasingly run down old concourse which had been opened in 1962.

And yet I think that if I had walked into that 1960s entrance with the memories of its Victorian predecessor I might well have been equally impressed.

Now I know the new concourse has its detractors, some of which have said to me it is too much like an airport and could in a different place be the entrance to a supermarket or one of those academy schools.

And perhaps there is something in that comment along with the assertion by one of my friends that  it won't go the full forty years.

But I do have a soft spot for both and increasingly for the original which I never knew and have only seen in pictures.

Those Victorian Stations may have seemed old fashioned and not fit for purpose, but for me the entrance to Manchester Victoria or that of  Charing Cross in London have elegance that can't be matched by Euston.

To which, John Anthony Hewitt has added, "Andrew Simpson Please add a sentence or two that will separate the three different stations that have been London Road / Piccadilly. At the moment, the discussion of the two modern stations seems to suggest that both the architect's design and the present day photo are one and the same concourse".

Location;  Manchester

Picture; Poster British Railways (London Midland Region), Manchester’s New Station by Claude Buckle, 1960, and the entrance of the 2002 makeover from the collection of Andrew Simpson