wrote in message news
On Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:01:58 -0000
"tim..." wrote:
"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On 2017-11-15 09:10:04 +0000, Basil Jet said:

Apparently the Centrale shopping centre (which only opened in 2004) is
to
be merged with the Whitgift Centre. I think this will probably create
the
largest shopping centre in the UK, since the combined area of the
current
centres is only just short of the Metro Centre in Newcastle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-41983441

This page suggests that East Croydon may gain a fourth pair of NR
platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydo...#Train_Station

The page also talks about lengthening tram platforms at West Croydon,
although I couldn't quite find enough info to make sense of that. I
would
have imagined that all the tram platforms are the same length, and
there
would be no point in lengthening one unless you lengthen them all.

I'd imagine that will be a relatively good thing - Croydon high street
and
both shopping centres are abject dumps (particularly the Whitgift which
needs knocking down).

it is 50 years old, and it was a revolutionary new way of shopping when it
opened (and, of course, the high street was still a main road through the
town at the time)

but the rest of the world has caught up and moved on

The age doesn't matter, its all down to whether the owners can be arsed to
keep it up to date and whether the locals are chav scum or not. Brent
Cross is
over 40 years old but you'd never know it walking around inside it because
it
gets investment and is in a relatively well off area.

The problem at Croydon is that it was originally built as an open air
shopping centre

I know that they added a roof, but it still must be difficult to give it the
ambiance of a center which was built from scratch as an indoor centre

tim