From John Redwood's Blog
Last Friday it was good to be present at the official opening of the new station, after so many years of pressing Network Rail to build one. The new building will offer better facilities and provides a much more impressive gateway to the town than the old structure, which the railway kept well beyond its useful life.
I'm really puzzled as to why people care so about improving stations. The government spent a fortune doing up St Pancras, something like £800m. Reading Station is getting something like an £850m overhaul (OK, part of that is about adding new platforms, but that's not the only thing being done).
The whole point of them is that you want to spend as little time in as possible. Their purpose is to get people on and off trains. No-one says "I'm just off to the station for a bit".
I regularly use Swindon station and while it's not attractive, I really don't care. As long as the ceiling isn't falling on people, the toilets flush and people can buy a coffee, who cares? Hungerford Station doesn't even have those facilities. It's just a couple of platforms and people still use it.