Britain’s Busiest Railway Stations No 8

Saturday 23rd March 2024

I still call it St Pancras even though it gained its International suffix back in 2007 and if you want to buy a ticket from a ticket machine to travel there you have to know to type in London St Pancras International.

At 33,296,120 passenger journeys a year, it lies in eighth place in Britain’s busiest railway stations’ rankings one place ahead of Farringdon, one stop along the Thameslink line, and featured in the previous blog in this series.

Renowned for its spectacular architecture (William Barlow’s magnificent single span iron roof) and extensive internal rebuild, opened by the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2007, to accommodate trains using High Speed 1 – Southeastern and Eurostar – from a railway perspective, St Pancras is really four stations in one.

Eurostar’s platforms are obviously completely segregated from the other three by nature of security, embarkation and immigration requirements and in any event International passengers are not included in the Office of Rail and Road’s statistics.

Just to the east of Eurostar are Southeastern’s three platforms for its High Speed service to Kent comprising four trains per hour – two to Ashford with one continuing to Folkestone, Dover and via Sandwich to Ramsgate and the other continuing to Canterbury West, Ramsgate and Margate; and two to Gravesend, Sittingbourne and Faversham with one continuing to Margate and Ramsgate. Additional peak hour trains operate via Gravesend to Strood and Maidstone West.

To the west of Eurostar’s platforms are four platforms used by East Midlands Railway (EMR) …

… for its six trains an hour on the Midland Main Line including two each to Sheffield (as well as Derby), Nottingham and Corby.

Those platforms are all on what is now regarded as first floor level, accessed by lifts and escalators (including at least one needing renewal already) …

… with a waiting area before the tickets gates, where, particularly with EMR, passengers are often kept until fairly close to departure time before being let through the gates.

Prior to the rebuild, this level was the normal level at which all activity took place while what is now regarded as ground floor level was a basement area famed for acting as a beer cellar.

Now it’s a high class retail area with top brands no doubt attracted by the well heeled passengers kicking their heels before being allowed through check-in and passport control to board their Eurostar train.

Unique among London termini the station also has two separate National Rail ticket offices. One operated by GTR run Thameslink and one by EMR but you’d never know from the exterior branding. It baffles me why anomalies like this continue. Surely it doesn’t need the establishment of Great British Railways to sort detail like this out?

There are also three different branded sets of ticket machines around the station if you know where to look – EMR and Southeastern…

… as well as Thameslink.

The two platforms for Thameslink, the fourth segment of the station, are at underground level …

… accessed from a gateline …

… by the station entrance/exit in the appropriately named Midland Road.

As explained in the Farringdon blog, Thameslink operate 12 trains an hour in each direction off peak supplemented by eight more in the peak.

As a result of all the foregoing domestic passengers have a wide range of destinations available from St Pancras including Ramsgate, Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone, Ashford, Faversham, Brighton, Horsham, Cambridge, Peterborough, St Albans, Corby, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Chesterfield and Sheffield.

Both Gatwick and Luton Airport have regular services with the former being the 6th busiest railway station outside of London and the latter enjoying a Connect branded non-stop service in just 22 minutes (23 minutes southbound) while at the other extreme St Pancras also enjoys regular services to one of London’s least used stations (fifth in the bottom 10) – South Merton on the Sutton/Wimbledon loop on Thameslink.

Following the station’s official opening in 1868 the Midland Railway constructed the impressive and architecturally acclaimed Midland Grand Hotel at the front facade facing Euston Road but unbelievably almost 100 years later in the 1960s plans were hatched to close and demolish the station and divert trains into neighbouring Kings Cross and Euston.

Thankfully such a crazy idea came to nothing and instead the station has gone on to become one of London’s most admired termini.

Personally I’m not bothered by the retail offer, but those who like a wander around the shops have a wide variety to choose from…

including many of the well known names having two outlets including M&S Simply Food, WH Smiths, Greggs, Starbucks, and Pret..

Some of the outlets offer grossly overpriced coffees in my opinion …

… but for those who want to indulge there are restaurants…

… luxury bars …

… and a whole variety of refreshment options available…

… some housed in the wonderfully restored part of the station at what is now ‘first floor’ level.

It’s a pity as much attention as engaging the retail opportunities in the 2007 revamp wasn’t paid to the provision of toilets as St Pancras joins the list of stations offering a completely inadequate supply, especially for women.

As well as the entrances/exits already mentioned on to Midland Road and the Euston Road frontage there’s a very busy entrance/exit opposite Kings Cross on the other side of the even more appropriately named Pancras Road (no ‘St’ though) between which there’s much interchange, indeed trains to Peterborough and Cambridge leaving from St Pancras are shown on the departure board in Kings Cross.

There’s another little used entrance/exit and that’s to and from the ‘coach station’ …

… at the north end of the concourse under the railway tracks accessed by a corridor beyond the toilets.

Other notable features on the first floor include a large bronze statue – The Meeting Place by Paul Day …

…. one of John Betjeman by Martin Jennings…

… a couple of pianos on the ground floor, one of which was donated by Sir Elton John who once gave an impromptu performance from it…

… a flying thing above the concourse by the Kings Cross entrance/exit…

… and recently installed nice bright departure board divided into the four station segments …

… together with a diagram explaining which way to walk.

There are also two access portals to the Kings Cross St Pancras Underground station used by six lines – Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria. One at the southern end of the station…

… and the other at the northern end…

… with various access points from inside and immediately outside the station.

In 2018 the station was connected to the East Coast Main Line when trains started using the newly constructed Canal Tunnel at the north end of the Thameslink platforms with trains linking Peterborough and Cambridge with Horsham and Brighton respectively.

There’s a left luggage facility…

.. but, aside from in front of the EMR gateline, there are very few seats for such a busy station.

Seats and toilet provisions aside, St Pancras is a magnificent station and I always enjoy travelling through, to or from it.

Roger French

Previous blogs in this Britain’s Busiest Railway Stations series: No 10 Euston; No 9 Farringdon.

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