Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Friday,

the 9th of January. And as you can possibly hear, I am at crew railway station, one of the great

junctions in the UK railway network, but I don't think a particularly favourite station. It's simply somewhere that I

always seem to end up in to change trains. But maybe I've been looking at railway stations

in the wrong way, not fully opening my eyes to their possibility. What they do, their great beauty, the stories they tell.

And that's why I'm keen to invite you to hear about Britain's favourite railway stations.

That's the name of a new series on Channel 4.

I've been lucky enough to talk to Cy King, who's one of the presenters,

alongside Siddy Holloway. So, Cy Kim, yes. Tell us about your new series. What's it called?

It's called Britain's favourite railway stations. Oh, well, hang on, I've got the answer for you.

It's London's and Pancras. No, well, yeah, I mean, that is a very beautiful station, but there are other, Simon, believe it or not, York, Glasgow, Sherringham. So, look, the series is a celebration, because we're in the 200th the air of the British Rail Network, aren't we? And it's about that, you know, Victorian

grandeur, because you know what it's like, you know, you're going to get a train, you're not

really taking in the grandeur and that optimism of that, of the industrial revolution and how

the architecture kind of represented that optimism and that colonial and imperial power of the Victorian.

So it's all about that and about the human story and the architecture.

It was joyous, Simon. It was a really lovely show to do.

Tell us your favourite stations. Can you give me a top three of you personally?

Glasgow, Newcastle, York, in St. Pancras.

I'm not entirely sure what order that might be in, but off the top of my head, I mean, fantastic. And I'm in Kings Cross a lot, because obviously it's on the East Coast main lane, and I'm backwards and forwards like a fiddler's elbow from Newcastle to London, Kings Cross. So those are there, and give you five it's where it's where the eight

in levin the month

it was two Manchester

me didn't it's where everything stops and

...