| The UK has joined the high-speed railway club belatedly, but it has done so in style, says Richard Lofthouse  Despite possessing completely separate philosophies of the train, the UK and her old adversary France hug each other a little tighter this month with the opening of St Pancras International, the London railway station that will send passengers off to Paris on Britain’s new high-speed rail line, called High Speed 1 (HS1).
Journey times have been shaved, with London to Paris taking two hours, 15 minutes instead of two hours, 35 minutes, London to Brussels taking one hour, 51 minutes instead of two hours, 15 minutes, and London to Lille taking one hour, 20 minutes instead of one hour, 40 minutes. Even more remarkable than the engineering feat involved, which propels a 300km/h train along a tunnel 40m beneath the London streets, surfacing serenely amid Kentish countryside for the last stretch to the English Channel, is the entirely conscious attempt to recreate St Pancras as a luxurious destination. It all starts with the banishment of the traditional departures board, renowned for its ability to turn the travelling hordes into a crowd of anxious gawpers. “We have made the passenger central to the experience of St Pancras,” insists marketing boss Ben Ruse. “We are reversing the normal order of things.  “Everyone’s mobile phone becomes their travel guide,” says Ruse, who explains that SMS technology allows every passenger to receive tailored real-time updates and platform information and that St Pancras is close to having ticket bar codes downloaded to mobile phones. “Imagine the effect on boarding times,” he enthuses. “You wave your phone screen in front of a scanner, and off you go.”
The quick tour of St Pancras reveals plenty of other intriguing innovations, including Europe’s longest champagne bar, notable not so much for its 96m length but for its location immediately next to the track. The idea is that people will sit there with a glass of bubbly, protected by a noise-blocking glass screen, watching trains glide in and out mere feet away. The platform has even been dropped at this point to allow drinkers to observe the whole train and not just the bit above the platform. “It’s the train as art for the first time,” says Ruse. “People can see the wheels; they can get down amongst the bogeys.” Next, there is a 9m bronze statue of a young couple enjoying a “brief encounter”, which will stand immediately beneath the enormous, recreated station clock at the head of the platform. Created by Paul Day and called The Meeting Place, the sculpture is supposed to make St Pancras “Europe’s most romantic station”. As for retail, the station’s owner, London & Continental Railways (LCR), has gone to enormous lengths to attract small independents as well as familiar chains, placing a farmer’s market at the centre of a part of London hitherto known more for its prostitutes than its organic sausages.  The last major component of the station is its spellbinding neo-gothic façade, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and built between 1868 and 1876. It was originally the Midland Great Hotel (named after train operator London Midland), which closed in 1935 and never reopened. Now, however, the structure is being reworked as a five-star Marriott hotel with 67 private apartments on the upper levels. All have been sold, with prices ranging from €800,000 for the smallest one-bedroom flat to €15m for the largest triplex penthouse suite.
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