Cambridge Train Station

Not too much of a station but it works fine. Walk to the city center or rent a bike. It is a very bike friendly town!

Cambridge is a very busy and large town with a tiny train station. So you are basically fighting through a crowd every time you enter or leave the station.
Also when you go outside the station, please remember the paved curb is also where taxis drops off people, so don’t stand there thinking it is part of the pavement. I nearly got ran over a few times waiting for my brother in law to pick me up.
Sucky.

Cambridge, wow. I expected more. Other than terminating and originating on a couple of platforms, this station looks just like every other mid-​country station. Yes, there is an AMT (two, actually) and a waiting room, there is some parking too. Otherwise, ho-​hum.
There are staffed ticket booths and a ticket barricade, but not nearly enough departure boards.

Cambridge is the least confusing of the medium sized stations I’ve used, somehow managing to have everything you need within easy walking and luggage lugging distance while still offering onward journeys to reasonably far flung places. There are all the shops you need to eat, drink and read without the place turning in to a shopping mall (see London Victoria (
) for more on this) and the inclusion of an M&S means you can even pick up a bit of dinner to take home.
Unfortunately I have to second the ladies toilets comment made by the lady below — not only are they grubby and smelly but there’s always a massive queue because there are only three cubicles. A really bad use of space means they’re arranged side by side along the back wall of a pretty big room, so there are three loos and lots of space to stand and queue in. How about more cubicles, less queue and less space needed for said queue?!
I agree also with Mofish’s point about easy onward travel in to the city centre. It couldn’t be easier to find your way either by walking (go straight up the road and take the first main road to the right which takes you to the centre in about 15 minutes), grabbing a taxi or checking out the local bus timetables.

I actually quite like this station.
Forget about the inside of the station, having been to a few provincial stations recently I have noticed that they all look the same and are barely worth describing.
What I appreciate here is the ease of onward travel. As you exit the station the taxis and busses crowd around like movie fans waiting by the red carpet. Plenty of options if you don’t feel like a walk.
One big confusion when arriving in towns you don’t know, even if you have a map, is getting your bearings right when you leave the station. Firstlyhave you left by the front or the back exit and even then is that dirt track over there the big road on my map? No such problems here. I think there is only the one clear exitand when you leave there is a road going straight aheadand it’s the road to follow if you are heading to the town centre. Even those with no sense of direction would be challenged to get lost at that point. I’m not sure they’d find the town centrebut they would at least start out on the correct path.

As stations go, I like Cambridge. It has good staff, a nice new travel centre and good bus connections. You can get good food at Marks and Sparks and Delice De France, nice baguettes at Upper Crust and great coffee from AMT at either end of the platform.
But man, the toilets are minging! I’d never take my kids in there!

Cambridge station was opened in 1845 by the Eastern Counties Railway, as part of its line to London (originally terminating at Shoreditch, now to Liverpool Street). This is busy station used by over 6 million passengers a year, including commuters, tourists and, of course, students!
The station has a handsome building of brick with a series of arches across the façade, an is listed at Grade II. One of its most notable features is the long main platform, which for many years was arguably the longest in the UK (see below), at over 500 yards (470m), although it is actually used as two platforms, with crossovers in the middle, used by both northbound and southbound through trains. There are also terminating bay platforms at either end of the building.
Facilities include cafes, a newsagents, tourist information office, car parking and cycle storage, and the station has step-​free access to all platforms. At the front is a taxi rank and bus stops.
Services to go to London King’s Cross (via Royston) and London Liverpool Street, as well as Ely, Norwich, Ipswich, Peterborough (and thence to Leicester and Birmingham). The fast trains to King’s Cross, advertised as the ‘Cambridge Express’, run every 30 minutes until early evening and take 45 minutes to/​from London.
Note (for anoraks and pub quizzes): The longest platform in the UK is now at Gloucester.