What it Looks Like Today: Exeter St.David's Station
At first glance,with all the modern day things like coffee shops,electronic signs and advertising boards etc. you may think that you are in an up to date modern station,but take a closer look and it is easy to see that you are very much in a station from a bygone age.
Everywhere you look there are reminders of the past,whether it be ornate iron columns,the ironwork roof frames or the wooden roof panels.It is a testament to the design and building quality of the past,that even after more than 170 years, the station is as usable today as the day it was built.Over the years the station has been enlarged and rebuilt in places,but it is still basically the original station.
To the north of the station is the unmissable red brick building that used to be the Station Master's House.It is quite a sizeable house compared with other Station Master's Houses that I have seen and I can imagine that the Station Master for Exeter St.David's was high status position within the railway and no doubt a position that would take most of a career to attain.
The house used to stand seprate from the platform,but in 1912 the platforms were increased in length northwards and hence you have this rather strange arrangement of the roof canopy being built around the house.
Whilst investigating the house,one of the station cleaners opened the door and I could see that the house still had it's original features including a staircase and parquet flooring.I also saw that this once proud building had now been reduced to a mere storage place for cleaning materials.