... when things were built to last. Infrastructure in particular. Buildings were made solid, and even signs were made solid. It was expected that when you built a railway or a station it would be in use for decades, possibly a century, perhaps more.

And so even something as prosaic as a Ticket Office and a Waiting Room sign was built solid. Back in the 30's, 40's, 50's and even 60's signs like this were commonplace and it was assumed that they would need to last through the ages. Then along came "new, space age, light weight, disposable" materials and the construction of signs and other infrastructure which was intended to last for decades became... quaint. And so we have ultra modern, cheap to produce lightweight signs like the orange one here and the station name in the right foreground that will look like garbage within a decade or two, and will become garbage as they're replaced by new, lightweight disposable ones.

I was on leave this day (a fact noted in my Outlook diary but I have no idea what I intended to get done) and this was intended to be the second entry in my infrastructure series. However that was to have been an early morning shot, which I got there too late to do. So I went for the sign comparison instead.