It isn’t often that a building still has the capacity to wow you when you step in to it. But I remember how stunned I was a year or two ago when I first saw the inside of the restored St. Pancras Station. The station has now been officially opened by the Queen and next week train services to France and Belgium start using the station properly.
I have always loved this grand Victorian architecture. Last Friday night I travelled up to Halifax and although nothing can probably quite beat St. Pancras Station in its drama, even some of the most ordinary institutions there have some amazing Victorian architecture. It comes from a time when there was huge civic pride and when private companies wanted to show off what they could achieve. It’s a far cry from the dominant attitude now of building things that are cheap in the short-term even if in the long term they become utterly disposable, become more expensive to maintain and just don’t stand the test of time in terms of architecture and design. As Duncan Borrowman points out, it is reassuring though that we can still put these buildings to good use by combining the historic architecture with modern engineering.
The whole logistics of building the new station whilst keeping trains running in to it for most of the time is pretty impressive too. I remember sitting in a meeting whilst I worked at Midland Mainline’s head office when they explained how they would have to close the station for certain weekends and then reopen it just five minutes before the first arrival on a Monday morning. We all looked at the person who told us this with incredulity as we just knew that it would never happen on time and if there was only five minutes slack there would be complete chaos as the train would end up having to terminate at a small station like Kentish Town, at rush hour, when another train was due in straight after it. As far I know everything did work out OK in the end, and for such a huge engineering project it has gone remarkably well.
I do still have a soft spot for the old grimy and run down St. Pancras though, and I feel a slight sadness that it has gone. I spent a year working on board Midland Mainline’s trains between Sheffield and St. Pancras, and not just in their head office, and so St. Pancras became a second home. Even after leaving that job, I felt comfortable and as though I was nearly home as soon as I came through the archway at the front of the old station. I even feel a sense of warmth towards the old Shires Bar. It might have been a tatty bar that reeked of stale smoke and beer, but it felt quite cosy and the bizarre mix of business people, weekend tourists, foreign students and beggars meant it was a great place for people watching. In my time I was at Midland Mainline the Station Manager at St. Pancras had promised a group of us a tour of the bits of the station that you never normally saw, unfortunately she never got around to doing it as it would have been great to have seen it before the restoration as well as now afterwards.
One thing with the new station that I do feel slightly sad about though is how Midland Mainline, the nearest there is to a successor to the company that build St. Pancras in the first place, is now pushed out to four remote platforms in what is basically a modern lean-to at the end of the old station. Perhaps that’s a bit unfair, but that part of the station does feel like an afterthought.
But despite that one downside to the station, it is great to arrive in to London and see such an amazing building there to greet you. Now that the rest of the building is going to be opened, I am looking forward to seeing more of it on my next trip to London.
