For two decades Euston had a very long departures board across the front of the station concourse.
You'd stand there watching for your platform to be announced and then rush forward to catch your train. A large expectant crowd often gathered.
At the end of 2022 it was switched off to be replaced by two new departure boards in the centre of the floor space.
They're digital not LED. They're brighter but smaller. They only fully display the next six departures. They're double-sided. And they're aligned perpendicular to the original board, which has divided those waiting into four separate groups and supposedly improved circulation around the concourse.
If you feel the need to tell us you would have set the boards out differently, either moan pointlessly into this comments box or get a job with Network Rail's stations team where your opinions would be of actual relevance.comments
Last spring Network Rail set about dismantling the old departures board, briefly revealing some old branding behind it.
And in its place they installed a single, very very long digital display.
The new screen was up and ready in November, an ominous black rectangle awaiting content.
It's now been fully switched on for the first time.
And not unexpectedly it's an advertising screen, blazing down non-train-related content.
The first advertiser is OVO Energy, an electricity supplier keen to tell everyone about Britain's energy mix. They've paid a not inconsiderable amount to display the percentage of energy currently sourced from wind/solar/etc, and obviously to plug themselves, in a carousel which goes round and round and round while you wait. It's horribly unavoidable.
The worst phase is the green phase, illumination-wise, although the white splash and animated swirling are terribly distracting too. And yes, admittedly the original departures board was bookended by advertising but this is on another level, bludgeoning its message onto a captive audience.
Sit at the back of the concourse on the nasty airport-style seating and you can see the advert clearly but not the times of the trains. Sit on the mezzanine nibbling overpriced Leon snacks and the OVO message burns into your soul whereas the departures display is awkwardly lower and side-on. What have we become when the font size in a pointless advert is umpteen times larger than the number of the platform that'll take you to Manchester?
I get why Network Rail have done it - it's because they need the money. A massive advertising screen will bring in more commercial revenue and help mitigate funding cuts which might lead to less long-term maintenance or ultimately higher fares.
But viewed objectively it can't be a good thing to deliberately flash irrelevance across a major transport hub to the detriment of genuinely useful information. When did public service take second place to commercial interest, why is that even a consideration and how have we got here?
In part it's how the railways are - the current government hates railways and loathes long term investment - but the railways are just part of it.
It's been going wrong for decades, a prolonged squeeze on public services across the board diminishing the things we need, an insistence on value for money that's resulted in paring back rather than enhancement, a grim determination to tighten the purse strings, a long-term policy of 'austerity' used simply as cover for cuts, a mindset that instinctively steps back instead of offering support, a selfishness that stems from the very top of politics, a blinkered drive to reduce taxes at all costs, an expectation that commercial interests will fund necessities, an earnest willingness to withdraw what the private sector could provide, an insidious rightward shift in the Overton window, the Eric Pickles-ation of public finance, forever kowtowing to what business wants, the abdication of society, a relentless drive towards Trumpian uplands, an obsession with cutting taxes because you think that's all the electorate will tolerate, an attitude so entrenched that even the opposition can't escape it, a narrowing of optimism in favour of petty penny pinching, a meathead urge to scrimp now and leave the future for others to tidy up, a deeply depressing abdication of community, a prolonged ideological constriction because voters think they want more money in their pockets, a ruling party left free to shrivel public services to the point where not even the most committed alternative could patch them up, a succession of budgetary shrinkers, a cabal of corrupt politicians letting shareholders off the hook, a philosophy of spend less and stuff the consequences, a decade and a half of I'm alright Jack, a creeping economic dystopia, a society off balance, a Tory government in power for far too long, an electoral error we need to put right.
It's not about whether the new information boards are in the right place, it's why they've been replaced by something screamingly worse.
