Having opened one venerable British institution yesterday morning, the Queen reopened another last night. And this is one that even the French admire.
Guillaume Pépy, head of SNCF, has described the majestically rejuvenated St Pancras, a cathedral of High Victorian engineering, as possibly the best station in the world. This, from the boss of possibly the best railway network in the world, is praise indeed, especially as it’s not one of his.
After years of parsimony and dithering, the nation that invented railways has finally caught up with the fact that trains are enjoying a 21st-century renaissance. The Queen’s official opening last night of the 68-mile (110 km) high-speed link from Central London to the Channel Tunnel marked not only the completion of Britain’s largest construction project but also a determined effort to reunite the train with the concept of romance.
Declaring the station open the Queen said: “The remarkable reverse of this great and gleaming station means that people across the whole of Britain, not just the South East, are suddenly quite a bit closer to Europe.”
In a showy ceremony involving an orchestra, singers and giant screens, William Barlow’s 1868 iron-and-glass train shed was transformed into a theatre with 1,000 invited guests, including the movers and shakers of modern railwaydom, politicians and hangers-on desperate to see a bit of a spectacle. Gordon Brown was on hand to welcome the Queen into a station that positively sings its £800 million restoration. David Cameron also shook the royal hand, as did Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who never lets his socialist principles get in the way of a chance to meet his monarch. Timothy West – thespian, real ale gourmet and steam train buff – played Barlow the architect in a short tableau telling the history of a station that has virtually risen from the dead and that puts the Gare du Nord, at the other end of the line, to shame.
Above the Queen and the guests, the roof of the station soared 100ft like a medieval cruck barn, except that its iron ribs had been repainted in their original baby blue – the idea, apparently, of St Pancras’s first station-master, who wanted his passengers to have a reminder of the open sky.
London and Continental Railways (LCR), which restored the station and built the link to be known as High Speed One, may be sold, broken up or part-privatised after finishing the £5.8 billion project to shave 20 minutes off the time to Paris. But they have been determined to restore St Pancras not just to a station but to an experience.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh saw the huge Meeting Place statue of two entwined lovers, the statue of Sir John Betjeman, whose campaigning saved St Pancras from demolition, and the undercroft, which once stored Burton beer but is now a shopping arcade as well as the departure and arrival point for Eurostar passengers.
The Queen met the architects, railway chiefs and others who have toiled for nearly ten years to ensure that Par-is-bound trains can travel at 186mph on this side of the Channel as well as the other. In France, the line built in 1994 has trains hurtling through the open spaces of the Pas de Calais; here, it will now burrow at speed beneath East London instead of being stuck behind the 8.16 all-stations-to-Folkestone. But St Pancras remains a British station serving, from next Wednesday, Thameslink trains between Bedford and Brighton as well as the Midland Main Line.
Rob Holden, chief executive of LCR, said: “The opening of St Pancras International is a great source of pride for the thousands of men and women who have been involved in one of the most significant projects in UK railway history.” So, Monsieur Pépy, as the Eurostar moves from Waterloo next Wednesday, you can no longer complain about the triumphalist name of the station at the British end. And, by the way, don’t you have a station in Paris called Austerlitz?
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