Captain’s Column: Gainsborough Central Station has been voted the worst train station in Britain

A gentleman called Andrew Dowd, who has visited 2,548 stops and travelled along 21,000 miles of track across the UK, confirmed that Central was the worst he had experienced on the British rail network.

It’s a new low for a station that in the past has been compared to war-torn Beirut by a rail mazine.

Personally, I always felt that was way too harsh.

Too harsh on Beirut. As one of the Davy Jones letters this week suggests, perhaps the town is missing out on a tourism opportunity to create a desert oasis on the banks of the Trent?

Anyway, I decided to have a wander up to Central Station the other day to see what all the fuss was about.

Obviously I wasn’t intending to catch a train. That would have been a little ambitious as a check of the dilapidated departure board revealed that the next train was due in exactly 107 hours, on Saturday morning.

Another Ice Age could well have arrived before the next service trundles in.