Railway Stations as District

"Districts are the relatively large city areas which the observer can mentally go inside of, and which have some common character" [Lynch p.66]

It is difficult for one to consider railway as a district. I can only think of rail yard, which cover large city area. But I cannot mentally go inside it. I think rail yard is a forbidden land in a city, it is a dead zone for pedestrian.

Among the current proposals for the redevelopment of the West Side Rail Yard in New York City, none of them have fully explored the potentially rich relationship between the railyards and the development above them, according to New York Times critics.1 It is likely that the "potentially rich relationship" is in fact not so rich, that those architects chose not to emphasize in their designs.

http://www.nypress.com/images/westside.jpg