Word: stations
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...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...
...government announced it would merge St. Pancras with Kings Cross, demolishing the former in favour of a sports center and social housing. But a campaign led by the then poet laureate Sir John Betjeman galvanized public opinion already stung by the demolition of the nearby old Euston station a few years earlier...
...Grand Central Station boasts unnerving parallels: another station on the verge of closure, an area in decline before regeneration," explained Ruse. "Now [it's] the second most visited tourist attraction in New York - we can get the same here...