They were the high-arched apotheosis of Victorian engineering, the focal point of civic pride, the gateways to Britain’s industrial heartlands. The railway stations that brought millions into Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Wigan were toughly built. They survived the raw English winter, wartime bombs, decades of soot and smoke and the neglect of British Railways. But now, stranded in the centre of rejuvenated cities, most are a mess — dirty, battered, cramped, a magnet for the seedy and the criminal and a disincentive to many thinking of taking the train.

Stations used to be exciting and romantic: the wartime farewells, the stolen kisses of Brief Encounter, the schoolboys spotting steaming monsters, the departure point for those seeking new lives. Each day more people still pass through Victoria, Waterloo and Euston than Heathrow. But in too many cities the stations are ill-lit, litter-strewn bottlenecks — places to avoid at night, neither safe nor green nor welcoming.

A report commissioned by Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, names the worst. They include the busiest: Manchester Victoria, Clapham Junction and Crewe. Most of Britain’s 2,500 stations are more than a century old, catering for 2.5 billion passengers a year. Many have been neglected for decades, occasionally patched and painted but with little attempt to accommodate cars and cycles, no new shops and toilets that are a public inconvenience.

St Pancras shows what can be done. Restored as a soaring cathedral of transport, it is now earning a tidy sum from its shops, bistros and champagne bar. Let others follow. Who knows what riches might return to Luton with a better station?