*Top,* the Réseau Express Régional (R.E.R.) in Paris, built in 1970 to connect the city to the suburbs; *above,* Line 9, a new station in the Chengdu Metro, in China.

One of Doha’s new metro stations, built for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

*Top,* Tren Maya, a 620-mile railway on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula; *above,* the new Haymarket station, part of England’s Tyne and Wear Metro system.

Hauptbahnhof, Berlin’s main railway station, located on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof.

*Top,* the 1930s Ivanovo Station, in Russia, which was restored during the coronavirus pandemic; *above,* a bus shelter outside the Kohta Station, in Finland, designed by students of Aalto University’s Wood Program.

Station Havens

A new book offers a dazzling tour of 20th- and 21st-century railway architecture, from Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof to Chengdu’s Line 9

In the 1830s, trains took over Britain. Life on the road, once characterized by seedy inns, mud-filled streets, and rusty carriages, became comfortingly predictable. The revolution had a name: the steam engine. The Stockton & Darlington Railway was the first to open, amid much fanfare, followed by Leeds’s Middleton Railway and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. These openings were not just about travel. The new routes fueled Britain’s industrialization and the social revolution that came with it.

Workers could now commute to cities, and urban centers flourished. Peasants who had vigilantly tended land for centuries found jobs at Bradford’s wool factories. Vacationers traveled by railway, soldiers too, which meant restaurants and hotels sprang up across the quiet British coast. Whereas waking hours were once determined by the light of sunrise and the waning sunset, people soon marked time by rail-station schedules instead.