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Lancashire and, Yorkshire Railway, system map

The railway network reached its greatest extent in the early 20th century. It was organized by that time into some two dozen regional companies such as the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, whose network is illustrated on the tile map. In 1923 these were grouped in turn into four large private concerns (Great Western Railway; London & North Eastern Railway; London, Midland & Scottish Railway: Southern Railway).

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London, Bounds Green Underground Station

In and around London the story was somewhat different. The economic recession was less harsh, and new stations and lines were required to serve the expanding commuter hinterland. The most adventurous of these new buildings were the Underground stations by Charles Holden, which were amongst the earliest public buildings in Britain in a Modernist idiom. Most of them feature tall ticket halls, with simplified concreteGlossary Term cornices above large glazed areas and yellow brick facing, and strong vertical accents made by ventilation towers or 'sky signs'. The example shown dates from 1932-3.

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Harlow Town Station

Harlow Town station, which serves one of the New Towns established to relieve pressure on London, has a glass-fronted booking hall with a great shelf-like entrance canopy linked to a broad footbridge or concourse over the platforms. The tower-like blocks rising above it housed lift machinery for handing the small goods such as parcels, an important tributary to railway traffic when the station was built (1959-60).

Oxford Road station in Manchester, rebuilt when the Cheshire suburban lines were electrified in 1960, was more experimental. Three conoidal shells of laminated timber make up the station building, a method chosen because the viaduct on which the lines ran could not take heavy loads. Though modest in scale, it catches something of the poetry of the great Victorian train sheds.

Other large stations were subsumed into rebuilding schemes affecting larger areas of town or city centres, especially after the disappearance of steam enginesGlossary Term in the 1960s removed the need for large volumes of ventilation space over the tracks. That at Birmingham New Street (1964-71) is notorious for relegating passengers to a gloomy cavern of platforms beneath a concreteGlossary Term slab supporting shops, offices and a car park.

A more enlightened approach was taken at Liverpool Street in London in 1985-91. The Great Eastern Railway train shed was extended to the original design of 1873-5, allowing the concourse to be enlarged and a galleryGlossary Term of shops inserted. Offices were built alongside and on a concreteGlossary Term raft over the cutting beyond, on the so-called 'air rights' principle, linked with further new blocks and open spaces on redundant railway land to one side.