Surprised noones nominated Cork yet. The main station for the countries 2nd largest station (and probably the one that takes the most money per passenger) has had a nice refurbishment made to the waiting area recently which isnt bad, but its lost its shop to be replaced by a glorified shed, theres usually only one ticket window open but that tends to be a good thing because when there are two the little old ladies staffing it spend more time talking to each other than selling tickets.

The platform area is a dark dismal disgrace, and as a former daily commuter through Pearse i can assure you that the toilets there are luxurious compared to what youll find in Kent station!

nominations close at midnight tonight and then we'll have a poll with two weeks of voting.

I'd have to go with Cork as well. There are some great, albeit controvesion plans for redevlopment.

There is a station somewhere on the Dart, southside, where the platform is extremely narrow. The area behind the yellow line can barely fit one person. I only noticed it from the train itself.

Rosslare Strand Station is awful. Luckily I used it in good weather. Hate to be stuck there in on a wet day.

That be either Seapoint or Glasthule, probably Seapoint since the nearly the entire northbound platform is like that

Seapoint itself deserves a mention for being the most inaccessible DART station with probably the worst staffing level of any staffed station, not to mention the building is falling apart

Problem with a vote like that is that the busier stations might have an advatage(!)
There could be some really bad stations on the Rosslare-Limerick line or the Nenagh line which nobody knows about...:D :D
Maybe there should be criteria and a judging panel!!

Here are my nominations

Least Attractive:
In terms of pure aesthetics, Pearse must be the worst. All that darkness and brown EVERYWHERE. It's retro-functional, and not in a good way.

All around Worst Dublin Station: Connolly is more pleasing to the eye, but has its own problems especially regarding integration. The journey from Platform 6/7 to the Luas station is crazy. And the toilets, yikes, talk about skimpy! And then of course we have the mega farm of ticket validation machines, which when installed replaced what had been a massive seating area. :mad: :mad: :mad:

I would have nominated Sligo for the ugliest station, but since they gave the station a mini-facelift it looks quite decent now.

Best hidden station (in my limited experience) must be Edgeworthstown. Whatever posessed the MGWR to put it a good 400M further outside the town centre than was necessary, I do not know. To make matters worse, while the station is to the South East of the town, guess where all the new developments and recent (i.e. since 2000) housing estates are. That's right, the North West. On the upside though, there's plenty of parking spaces there for "Park N Ride" use, which makes it a priceless asset to much of North Longford. :)

I'm surprised Adamstown station isn't in the running for Best Station, from what I saw of it in photographs, it looks really nice. In fact, when I first saw a pic of the interior, my first thought was "Gee, that looks like it might be an airport terminal."

Worst Major Station: Connolly, narrowly edging out Cork. Cork has worse facilities, but it doesn't have the air of menace you get round Connolly later in the evening.

Worst Minor Manned Station: Killarney, not so much for the station itself as for the access problems. The arrival or departure of a train causes the whole area by the station to clog up with traffic, making it impossible for drivers and potentially lethal for pedestrians. Mallow and Limerick Junction deserve honourable mentions as well. People probably do more waiting in those stations than any others on the network and yet the facilities are non-existent.

Unmanned Halt: Carrigaloe. It has to be seen to be believed. Platforms that are well below the train (they even warn about this on the Irish Rail website). A general appearance that there has been no investment for 30+ years.

What about The Curragh halt???

Curragh station is officially closed

The extended part of the northbound platform at Blackrock (about the "front" half of the platform) is narrow enough that to walk around someone you have to go over the line.

all right, time for a poll.

only ten options allowed so some had to be dropped.

As weehamster has suggested, this years one is a bit of a test run.... we'll co-incide with the IE one next year.

Back of the northbound platform in Seapoint is narrower

God help Pearse - it should be a treated as a national treasure due to it's age and importance in Irish transports history... I have seen Northern Rail stations with more grace

It still has a platform sign that says "Curragh". :)

Mosney has been closed for years and still has platform and station sign AND electronic display. Last time I looked, the display was still illuminated.

I have to agree with the comments about Drogheda. The lack of displays is a pain, and it's not uncommon for trains to be waiting on both platforms 2 and 3, leaving you to guess which one to board - or trek back over the footbridge to find someone to ask. Trains often depart unannounced, and you are often left to guess what's going on.

On the other hand, I've always found the staff to be friendly and helpful (when you can find them), the toilets always clean and well looked after, and in general the station falls a long way short of what's required for a worst station award. I'll mention it to them so they can try harder next year.

I agree that Pearse is a deserving winner. We'll have to see if the current refurbishment fixes anything. I can't help wondering if they're going to bolt on a new entrance, but leave the existing station unchanged, like the Townsend St entrance to Tara St. The current ticket office is a disaster, and if the rumours of ticket validators going on the platform rather than the ground floor are true, I have worries of dangerous crowds of people unable to get off the platform. And yes, the toilets are horrible. Notice also, the disabled toiled requiring the key to be acquired from the booking office, which would be a difficult trek for a wheelchair user travelling on their own,

Connolly also leaves much to be desired. I think they did a relatively good job with the automatic validators, and it's amazing what a lick of paint has done for the toilets - though they're still pretty bad, at least they're not as dark and dingy.

I think Grand Canal Dock deserves an honourable mention. The validators were never going to be adequite for a station that busy. There's never enough staff for the number of people using it - often only one person present at rush hour. I also met a lady there trying to get a buggy out of the station when the lift down to street level wasn't working - the guy at the ticket desk wasn't able to help as he was on his own. I checked after, and there was no mention of Grand Canal Dock on the list of stations with broken lifts on the electronic displays.

No rumour. The ticket validators have already been installed on the Southbound platform (not functional yet though).

They are there, virtually the exact same spot as they where back in the 1970's

Pearse is the winner no question

Next station down, Monasterevin, is _unofficially_ "closed".

Pity I was too late for the poll. Monasterevin is def way up there as a contender for the most underutilised, undervalued and (especially) undermined train station in Ireland.

8 trains a day is hardly closed