These gorgeous train stations will restore your faith in public transit
These gorgeous train stations will restore your faith in public transit
A new book collects 50 of the most beautiful, noteworthy, and strange railway stations from the 20th and 21st centuries.
We’re in the midst of a rail renaissance. Amtrak is seeing record ridership, high-speed rail is finally making its way to the U.S., and countries around the world are investing in their railways. At the heart of all of these improvements is the train station—a breed of architecture pioneered in the 1800s that has come into its own over the last century.
In the new book Station: A Journey Through 20th and 21st Century Railway Architecture and Design, journalist Christopher Beanland assembles 50 modern train stations from around the world, from Madrid’s Atocha station, which features a forest of a garden, to Berlin’s open, sunlit Hauptbahnhof.
“I was looking for a global selection of interesting architecture and design from the 20th and 21st centuries,” Beanland tells Fast Company.
As a self-admitted brutalism lover, Beanland says he had to include Skopje station in North Macedonia. Among his other favorites included in the book are Coventry station in England and Los Angeles’s Union Station, with its white facade and distinctly Californian architecture, which he describes as “Pueblo Glam.”
While public transit in the U.S. sometimes gets a bad rap, other American railways also made the list, including the monorail at Walt Disney World, the Detroit People Mover, and the brutalist D.C. Metro. For Beanland, the book represents the most basic of truths: Build a good train station, and people will likely use it.
“From the Elizabeth line in London to the Acela between Union Station, D.C., and the Moynihan Train Hall and Boston Back Bay, from the Bilbao metro to the TGV to the Shinkansen—people just want fast, cheap, efficient transit,” he says. “If it includes cool, clean, well-designed stations, they will come and use it.”
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