Kings Cross St. Pancras
Posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 in: London
St. Pancras was actually built as part of a competition to build the news Houses of Parliament, after the original burnt down in 1834. For years it slumbered as a huge gothic monument to Victorian ambition, servicing not very glamorous lines to not very exciting places. Then Eurostar came along, and all of a sudden, St. Pancras was taking a leaf out of Liverpool Street Station’s book, and everything was shiny, glassy, well-lit in a cool light and generally radiating expresso and champagne. Trains head off to Paris or Disneyland, Lille or Brussels, as well as rather less glamorous destinations like Sutton or Bedford.
Twenty yards away, Kings Cross services the lines to Cambridge, Edinburgh and Leeds, (as well as Hogwarts) and its main hall is never ever not packed with people waiting to catch the fat lumbering trains that sit farting in its platform like elephants after a dodgy seafood meal. You usually stand a good chance of hearing a Geordie or a Scottish accent outside Kings Cross, although going the other way is heavily disencouraged by having to go via a ticket hall that moves at a speed to make tectonic drift seem sparky.
Underneath all this lot, you can find Piccadilly, Northern, Circle, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City and Victoria Line trains all competing for space at the bottom of a maze of escallators. In 1987, there was a fire in Kings Cross, in which 31 people died. This was in the day in which escallators were wood, and cigarette smoking was still permitted on the underground. A plaque can still be found commemorating it, though you have to look a bit to find it.
Buses also converge on these two stations, although strangely enough, the 205, which is supposed to pass through, can almost never, ever be found when you need to catch it ever. Sages agree that it is far, far faster to get out and walk between the stops on Pentonville Road, outside the ex-Thameslink station (disused after St.Pancras got its make-over), to the next stop thirty yards ahead, than to wait for your bus to go round the one-way system where Kings Cross Road meets the Euston Road meets York Way, as those particular thirty-yards are contenders for the slowest in London.
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Funny you should comment about Parisians judging the moment they come out of the station. They may be oooh’ed and aaaah’d by St Pancras, but the moment they step into the London Underground the exposed wiring and the buzzing electric lights must leave quite a impression. In the underground’s defence though – at least we don’t need to pull a handle to open the doors (with the exception of National Express).
I recently came back from a short weekend trip to Paris and the first thing I noticed was how amazingly new, modern, and shiny it was compared to Gare du Nord which retained the architechtural style of elegant metal arches that has it’s own beauty that can only be achieved by the mathematical precision of Engineers and stone carved and chipped to seem soft and flowing.
Obviously, I much prefer Gare du Nord (Mind you, I’ve lived most of my life in Hong Kong where shiny, modern, and clean straight lines seem to be the preferred style – to the point where historical structures are destroyed without much thought, and no matter what time or where you are, it would be just as busy as London between 4-6pm.)
Also. I would also like to take this opportunity to complain. Yes. It’s your fault for writing such a gripping story that completely takes me back to the magic I found in Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman) that I thought I would never be able experience again, and now I find myself completely unable to revise for my upcoming exams until I finish these last 100 pages.
On that note; I wish you luck with your exams too, and honestly; Thank you. Thanks for writing such a beautiful story.
May 11, 2009