Chester Railway Station really doesn't do a great, historic town in Chester any justice, Chester…read morewas once a Roman fortress, a battlefield in the North West of England, but the station which is a category B station just doesn't seem that.
The walk into the city from the station I agree is poor, I personally ended up getting lost having to go down some sketchy pathways, which really didn't match the city which I found to be really nice overall, a lack of buses going to the station too (Stagecoach Gold do run an irregular service which doesn't seem to be used either as I was the only passenger on the entire bus - maybe it was just because it was a Monday afternoon?)
It has 7 platforms and is served by Avanti, Transport for Wales, Northern and Merseyrail.
I do find the station pretty hard to navigate too, I ended up using a lift which went to a bridge (between the platforms) after getting off the train, even though it was level access - to make it more confusing they had a gate which you could see the exit out of, but you had to walk all the way around the platform, to go back on yourself just to get in/out which makes little sense.
They do have ticket barriers here, I'm not sure if it's the new thing but I noticed 2 or 3 people while at the station trying to get through the station barriers, even jumping through to do anything they could to evade the fare.
Some key routes here include Transport for Wales services to many big cities in Wales, and the Avanti service into London, however, if you're going into London Euston, trains here run every hour (but for some reason, there isn't a train at 18:35 when there is at 15:35,16:35,17:35, forcing a two-hour gap with the next service than at 19:35, so you might be best going into Crewe depending on when you want to travel and it takes roughly the same amount of time.
Even Manchester services are the same - for my journey to Chester I boarded an Avanti service into Crewe, and then another service from Crewe to Chester which used the London Euston - Chester line, I found this journey to be much more pleasant than other alternatives (It was even better than a direct service provided by Northern or Transport for Wales, the latter I used for my return), this means you spend less time on the train but obviously changing services with a 20-minute wait makes it less worthwhile, but still if you time t right it helps save some money too!
There are a WHSmith and a small cafe/shop in a waiting area on Platform 4 but there isn't much else in the station sadly.
I'm not sure if it was a problem on my visit but the announcements for train runnings didn't seem to be working very well at the station, for example, I nearly missed my train back into Manchester which arrived in early as I was in the waiting area at the time (luckily it was on Platform 4)
It has a good number of services but for the overall consumer passenger experience, it has a long way to go to do justice for the great city that Chester actually is. 2*