St Pancras railway station
St Pancras railway station (/ˈpæŋkrəs/), officially known since 2007 as London St Pancras International, is a major central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar services from Belgium, France and the Netherlands to London. It provides East Midlands Railway services to Leicester, Corby, Derby, Sheffield and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line, Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International, and Thameslink cross-London services to Bedford, Cambridge, Peterborough, Brighton, Horsham and Gatwick Airport. It stands between the British Library, the Regent's Canal and London King's Cross railway station, with which it shares a London Underground station, King's Cross St Pancras.
For the airport with IATA code QQS, see Shuttle Landing Facility.
St Pancras 
Network Rail (High Speed) for HS1 Ltd[1]
Eurostar[2]
Network Rail (Thameslink and Midland Main Line service platforms)
STP, SPX, QQS (IATA)
A (mainline platforms)
C1 (Thameslink platforms)
15
Yes[3]
Yes – external (in car park)
Yes
35.984 million[5]
4.518 million[5]
36.040 million[5]
4.777 million[5]
6.363 million[5]
0.926 million[5]
18.995 million[5]
2.878 million[5]
33.296 million[5]
5.673 million[5]
Opened as terminus for Midland
New domestic (Midland Main Line) platforms opened
Relaunched by HM The Queen/Elizabeth II. Renamed London St Pancras International
Eurostar services transferred from London Waterloo International
Low-level Thameslink platforms opened
Southeastern high-speed domestic services introduced
The station was constructed by the Midland Railway (MR), which had an extensive rail network across the Midlands and the north of England, but no dedicated line into London. After rail traffic problems following the 1862 International Exhibition, the MR decided to build a connection from Bedford to London with its own terminus. The station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed with a single-span iron roof. Following the station's opening on 1 October 1868, the MR constructed the Midland Grand Hotel on the station's façade, which has been widely praised for its architecture and is now a Grade I listed building along with the rest of the station.
In the late 1960s, plans were made to demolish St Pancras entirely and divert services to King's Cross and Euston, leading to fierce opposition. The complex underwent an £800 million refurbishment to become the terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link/High-Speed 1/HS1 as part of an urban regeneration plan across East London, which was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2007. A security-sealed terminal area was constructed for Eurostar services to mainland Europe via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel, with platforms for domestic trains to the north and south-east of England. The restored station has 15 platforms, a shopping centre, and a coach facility. London St Pancras International is owned by HS1 Ltd and managed by Network Rail (High Speed), a subsidiary of Network Rail.
Location[edit]
St Pancras is at the southern end of the London Borough of Camden on a site orientated north–south, deeper than it is wide. The south is bounded by Euston Road (part of the London Inner Ring Road), and its frontage is the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, while the west is bounded by Midland Road, which separates it from the British Library and Francis Crick Institute, and the east by Pancras Road, which separates it from King's Cross station.[7] The British Library is on the former goods yard site.[8] Euston railway station is around ten minutes' walk away along Euston Road.[9][10]
Behind the hotel, the train shed is elevated 5 m (17 ft) above street level and the area below forms the station undercroft which is where most of the shops and restaurants are located, along with the Eurostar departure lounge. The northern half of the station is mainly bounded to the east by Camley Street, with Camley Street Natural Park across the road. To the north-east is King's Cross Central, formerly known as the Railway Lands, a complex of intersecting railway lines crossed by several roads and the Regent's Canal.[11][12]
Several London bus routes have stops nearby, including 73, 205 and 390.[13]
Domestic station[edit]
Background[edit]
The station's name comes from the St. Pancras parish, whose name originates from the fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome. The station was commissioned by the Midland Railway (MR), who had a network of routes in the Midlands and in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire, but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital; subsequently, the company's Leicester and Hitchin Railway gave access to London via the Great Northern Railway (GNR).[14]
In 1862, traffic for the second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; the route into the city via the L&NWR was also at capacity, with coal trains causing the network at Rugby and elsewhere to reach effective gridlock.[15] This was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford,[16] which would be just under 50 miles (80 km) long.[17] Samuel Carter was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, which was sanctioned in 1863.[18]
The main economic justification for the MR extension was for the transport of coal and other goods to the capital, which was hindered by a 1s 9d toll on GNR lines.[19] A large goods station was constructed between 1862 and 1865, sited to the west of the King's Cross coal depot between the North London Railway and the Regent's Canal.[17] Although coal and goods were the main motivation for the London extension, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London passenger terminus and decided it must have a front on Euston Road. The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by Earl Somers.[17]
International station[edit]
Design[edit]
The original plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) involved a tunnel from south-east of London to an underground terminus in the vicinity of King's Cross. However, a late change of plan, principally driven by the then Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Heseltine's desire for urban regeneration in east London, led to a change of route, with the new line approaching London from the east. This opened the possibility of reusing St Pancras as the terminus, with access via the North London Line, which crosses the throat of the station.[36][52]
The idea of using the North London line was rejected in 1994 by the transport secretary, John MacGregor, as "difficult to construct and environmentally damaging". However, the idea of using St Pancras station as the terminus was retained, albeit now linked by 12.4 miles (20 km) of new tunnels to Dagenham via Stratford.[36][52]
London and Continental Railways (LCR), created at the time of British Rail privatisation, was selected by the government in 1996 to reconstruct St Pancras, build the CTRL, and take over the British share of the Eurostar operation. LCR had owned St Pancras station since privatisation to allow the station to be redeveloped. Financial difficulties in 1998, and the collapse of Railtrack in 2001, caused some revision of this plan, but LCR retained ownership of the station.[53]
The design and project management of reconstruction was undertaken on behalf of LCR by Rail Link Engineering (RLE), a consortium of Bechtel, Arup, Systra and Halcrow. The original reference design for the station was by Nick Derbyshire, former head of British Rail's in-house architecture team. The master plan of the complex was by Foster and Partners, and the lead architect of the reconstruction was Alistair Lansley, a former colleague of Nick Derbyshire recruited by RLE.[12][54][55]
To accommodate 300-metre+ Eurostar trains, and to provide capacity for the existing trains to the Midlands and the new Kent services on the high-speed rail link, the train shed was extended a considerable distance northwards by a new flat-roofed shed. The station was initially planned to have 13 platforms under this extended train shed. East Midlands services would use the western platforms, Eurostar services the middle platforms, and Kent services the eastern platforms. The Eurostar platforms and one of the Midland platforms would extend back into the Barlow train shed. Access to Eurostar for departing passengers would be via a departure suite on the west of the station, and then to the platforms by a bridge above the tracks within the historic train shed. Arriving Eurostar passengers would leave the station by a new concourse at its north end.[52]
This original design was later modified, with access to the Eurostar platforms from below, using the station undercroft and allowing the deletion of the visually intrusive bridge. By dropping the extension of any of the Midland platforms into the train shed, space was freed up to allow wells to be constructed in the station floor, which provided daylight and access to the undercroft.[52]
The reconstruction of the station was recorded in the BBC Television documentary series The Eight Hundred Million Pound Railway Station broadcast as six 30-minute episodes between 13‒28 November 2007.[56]
Accidents and incidents[edit]
On 17 February 1918 a German Gotha aircraft dropped five bombs, one of which destroyed the roof of the station's ornate booking hall and killed 20 people. The station was also bombed in World War II, including a parachute mine damaging the roof on 15–16 October 1940, and a bomb exploding in the beer vaults underneath Platform 3 on 10–11 May 1941.[35]
On 20 July 1959, a locomotive overran a signal and crashed into Dock Junction Signal Box; trains had to be hand-signalled in and out of St Pancras for several days.[126]