Paris - London - Eurostar St. Pancras Station
High speed trains take you to France in just over two hours
Nov 19, 2007
In 1867 the brand new St. Pancras railway station just about knocked the socks off the Victorians.
They stared, amazed, at the enormous train shed with its huge ribs spanning 240 feet and stretching 100 feet high.
London - St. Pancras Station in the 19th-Century.
St. Pancras was a masterpiece of Victorian engineering. Close by, its companion, the Grand Midland Hotel, completed in 1872, is a gem of true Gothic design. With its towering spires, pinnacles and gables it was hailed as the best hotel in the British Empire.
All this came at a cost. The railway company bought land in the middle of Agar Town and a church and thousands of homes were demolished. Nobody seems to have asked the inhabitants what they thought of all this, and those who did have something to say more or less said ‘Good riddance’.Like Charles Dickens who, in 1851, called the area ‘A complete bog of mud and filth.’
Over the years St. Pancras fell out of favour. It was abandoned and stayed empty for years. The public’s taste for Gothic buildings was fading and by the Sixties many thought it should be torn down. Fortunately, a few people fought for its survival. The poet John Betjeman led a campaign to save the station and as a tribute to his efforts a statue of him has been placed in the new St. Pancras Station.
St. Pancras Station Today
St. Pancras was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on November 6, 2007. It has been restored to the striking glass and steel ‘cathedral’ that it was over a hundred and fifty years ago. It is Europe’s largest engineering project, completed on time and on budget. The officials in charge of the building of the new St. Pancras have said some of their inspiration for the interior came from the restoration of Grand Central Terminal in New York in the 1990’s, which is not only a railway station but a place to visit. St. Pancras will also become a destination in itself. It already has a 300-foot-long Champagne bar, said to be the biggest of its kind in the world. With restaurants, bars, high end shops gradually filling the space.
St. Pancras Station - A short hop to Paris
What most people will come here for, however, is to take a train, and the most popular journey will probably be the Eurostar train to Paris. Travelling at 186 miles an hour, the journey takes two hours and nineteen minutes, making it perfectly possible to spend almost a full day in the ‘City of Light’. Other destinations are Lille, Calais, Disneyland Paris, Brussels, Avignon. There are 17 daily trains from London to Paris.
St. Pancras Station and the Channel Tunell
In all the excitement surrounding the re-born St. Pancras and the possibly of quick visits across ‘the pond’ by Eurostar. it’s as well to remember that all of this would never have happened without the building of the Channel Tunnel. It was completed in 1994 and has been declared one of the ‘Seven Wonders of the Modern World’ by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The ‘Chunnel’ as it is sometimes called, is 31.35 miles long and the train is in it for only half an hour.
London - The Romance of Rail Travel
Perhaps the days when rail travel was considered romantic and glamorous are about to return. One never knows what may happen. Think of the classic movie ‘Brief Encounter’ where Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson meet and fall madly in love on the railway station. And they hadn’t yet even boarded the train!
Destinations:
Direct from London: Lille,Calais, Paris, Disneyland Paris, Brussels, Avignon.
17 daily trains from London to Paris
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