Word: rails
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...tourist traveling on dilapidated trains to and from London would quickly discover, Britain's domestic railway system has been in a state of slow decline ever since the sun set on the British empire after World War II. But after being maligned for years as overpriced, cramped and uncomfortable, rail travel in Britain is about to make a comeback - in the glorious shape of London's revamped St. Pancras station...
...object of the makeover is restore a golden age of rail travel, in which the train station is "a place to be seen," says Ben Ruse, a spokesman for the redevelopment. Not only that, St. Pancras International, which opens on November 14, will consecrate the integration of Britain's lumbering railways into Europe's high-speed network, cutting travel time from London to Paris, under the British Channel, to 135 minutes...
...passengers, both visitors and natives alike, whose recent experience has been standing armpit to armpit in overcrowded carriages before plodding in and out of drab stations, St. Pancras will attempt to restore the romance to rail travel. Although less well-known abroad than the nearby Kings Cross station popularized in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, St. Pancras still had the last laugh: Its grand gothic interior was the location for the scene in the movie version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone when the boy wizard departs from the mythical platform...
...First opened in 1868, the brief of its architect, William Henry Barlow, had been to build the world's fastest and grandest railway station to reflect Britain's international pre-eminence. "St Pancras was symbolic of the history of rail travel in the U.K.," says Ruse. "It was a bygone era of success in rail - both in engineering achievement and architectural brilliance...
...There is an abandoned rail tunnel that runs along Cambridge street, from the Mass Pike, over a pair of overpasses and under an abandoned tunnel,” said Harry Mattison, a member of the task force. “If you could physically connect that to the Mass Pike, then you’ll have direct access to the Science Complex...