High Speed 1 (and only)

I’m in the second carriage from the front with my designated escalator taking me halfway down the Eurostar trainset at the edge of the original trainset. Incredible: where my old train to Sheffield, this thing just keeps going and going.

New Midland Mainline platforms now spill out on the left hand side beyond the confines of the original building and separated from international tracks with a lattice work of electrified deterrence. To keep the continentals out or the Northerners in I wonder?

Eurostar may be cool, fast, long and all that but it’s not without its faults. Carriages have wide pillars between the windows leaving every 2 or 3 sets of (standard class) seats with only slithers of a view. Typically, seat 53 was one of them.

Today it was far from a problem and I shifted to ensure a good survey of the Olympic site, Stratford International etc. I needn’t have bothered: 2 minutes glide out of St Pancras and we’re underground… and that’s pretty much where you stay. Stratford International is admittedly over a year from being opened (and I’m sceptical Eurostar are serious about running services from there any more than they were about that overnight sleeper regional service) but it’s just a high concrete wall at each side for now.

This line is fast, very fast, an impressive feat of engineering: of the sort the Japanese, French and Germans have been building for decades. Almost all of it is underground or in cuttings though: presumably good for the aerodynamics and the locals but a disappointment for the traveller through the slit of a window. On the odd occasion the train does pop its head above the banks, this part of south Essex and Kent ain’t half bleak and dull, even worse than northern France.

Cast your mind back to crusty old Waterloo International and the asthmatic way you approached it through Orpington and Brixton. It may very well have crawled alongside suburban stoppers but you did get the sense and character of the UK and drew into Waterloo alongside the Thames, catching glimpses of Westminster and the London Eye.

Now you just emerge from a tunnel (having thankfully rocketed along the new line) and straight into the terminus. It’s a great bit of technical achievement and logistical progress but I can’t help thinking we’ve lost something too.

I can’t quite get over the idea of arriving into London from France from the North. I can’t quite fall in love with the experience of arriving back into London or the ‘destination’ station that awaits. But I’d take it over the plane any day.

Grand Central?

I’ve always admired the gothic architecture of St Pancras and there was something endearingly majestic about Intercity 125s filling the air with black acrid diesel exhaust: you could almost pretend it was steam from a Nigel Gresley creation.

But that’s all changed: where HSTs to Sheffield once stood, Eurostar TGVs await to whisk you to Paris in less time. The roof, once blackened by smoke and steam is gleaming and flooding every corner with light. The station has sunk, the old undercroft below is the station, holding platforms on iron-pillared shoulders. It’s clean, it’s crisp: re-faced brick work, combining with light blue painted metalwork and flawless concrete platforms hosting the best of 21st century locomotion. This is our Grand Central, a destination in its own right: those were the headlines, that was the hype.

It is a revelation, hugley impressive and yet it’s not won me over, not yet. The old Midland Hotel demands grandeur, extravagance, a little quirkiness but clock and train shed shell apart, it’s all a little too clinical. The often-cited champagne bar lacks magnificence and feels like an exercise in making a very long table than delivering a memorable experience; maybe it would be different after the cold light of day. Maybe that is part of the problem: no clever use of light to draw out the potential of the most amazing railway building in London with the most compelling transport connections in the country.

Grand Central in New York is different: multiple levels, hidden alcoves, grand staircases along with the carefully regulated use of sun and artificial light all conspire to give a sense of opulence, romance, adventure and occasion. I found it frustratingly difficult to photograph last year but I’d rather publish blurred pictures of domed frescos and chandeliers than gleaming trains at gleaming platforms.