The new railway station for Rochester is already under construction, as the short time-lapse video below shows. This illustrates how the new underpass was assembled on the site, the gap prepared for it, and then the whole thing was slid into place on a cushion of compressed nitrogen gas.
The new site, in Corporation Street, will serve both the existing community and also connect to the new Rochester Riverside development that is also being constructed right now, and which is starting to look very promising at the Doust Way end which is partly complete. I had a little wander around there recently, as well as a look at the rail station work from the top deck of a No. 141 'bus on my way back from a Strood South walkabout (yes, another on!)
It is at times like this that I can really 'feel the future' even without my abilities as a Sensitive – though I have done so in years gone by and felt it back then too. As with other instances I have mentioned before, here and elsewhere, it has been quite a powerful feeling to re-live, in real time, experiences I previously only felt as yet-to-happen.
As with those others, it is a very good sense indeed that I have of the transformation of old, tatty areas that had been there since before I moved into the area in 1997, into high quality, modern townscapes and riverscapes. There is a sense of new life, what some might call 'green shoots' growing out of the old now-dead landscapes of yesteryear.
The old Rochester station is, bluntly, a ghastly place, especially from the street coming up to the platforms, and is now in the wrong place. This new station will be such an improvement, and it too has started to happen...
The old station is also far too close to Chatham station too.
ReplyDeleteGood point, and one that I have always thought too, ever since the days when I'd pass through here on the way to visiting our (then) Margate office, years before moving here.
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