Rhyl Railway Station, Main Building

Rhyl Railway Station’s main building demonstrates the character of a later 19th-century remodelling, whilst retaining elements of Francis Thompson’s original mid-19th century design. The main block is two storeys high, constructed of brown brick with yellow and red brick banding, and topped with hipped slate roofs. The five-bay front features an ashlar cornice with circular bosses and a canted central entrance porch leading to the booking hall. Horned sash windows include horizontal glazing bars. Historic photographs show a now-absent grant porte-cochere extending across the entire frontage. Single-storey linking ranges extend to either side, with the range to the left being longer and connecting to a set-back office and waiting room, similarly detailed but with an altered canted bay window to the right and paired central first-floor windows. A gabled cross range is positioned to the extreme left. Beyond this is a five-bay range, partially open at the front, featuring arcaded facades with cast iron columns, foliate capitals, and pierced spandrels. This section incorporates a parcels and luggage loading bay and a two-bay Station Master’s Office. The right-hand end continues the main platform canopy, which wraps around a boarded store at the southwest end of the platform.

The platform canopy is distinguished by a deep, pitched roof that cantilevers outwards, featuring a deep, fretted valence. The roof and canopy are supported by square-section cast iron columns and steel girders, braced longitudinally by lattice girders. Flat boarded ceilings are present on either side of the glazed central gable. The platform elevation of the main building displays a rendered panelled frieze that echoes the brick detailing of the front, with similar cambered and shouldered openings and sash glazing, including a canted bay window for the Tea Room.

A steel-framed footbridge, roofed with a pitched roof and continuous glazing within a wood-panelled superstructure, is supported by cast iron columns. Low, red-brick lift towers with pyramidal roofs are located at each end. Twin flights of stairs rise from the southwest end of the up platform, preserving original cast iron balustrades with pointed heads to the uprights and brass knobs on the handrails. The central handrail extends across the bridge to manage passenger flow. A similar pair of staircases is located at the northeast end of the down platform canopy, which is shorter than the up platform’s but utilizes a similar style and construction with cast iron columns and steel girders supporting the roof and canopy, and a deep fretted valence.