Life’s full of coincidences.

I thought I’d post a comment on how Chester‘s railway station sadly falls short of the kind of gateway you’d expect to one of Britain’s most attractive historic cities.

Then I noticed that I’d had a visitor to my blog from a Google search about Chester station – even though I’d not yet written the post. So here it is…

I’d often wondered why the station was such a mess: abandoned canopies,  pillars that support invisible roofs and odd gaps in the station walls.

Yet the elegant Francis Thompson frontage hints at a more elegant past. According to Wikipedia, today’s down at heel appearance followed an accident in 1972, when a train carrying aviation fuel crashed, causing an
explosion that blew off the station roof.

Shame on British Rail and its successors for  not restoring the place to its former glory.