A new departure

‘The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track’, shown on BBC2 earlier this week, portrayed the train services from King’s Cross as a farcically dysfunctional, outrageously expensive, unbearable to use, national embarrassment. Some of the staff, however, when not being patronised by a manager who evidently modelled himself on David Brent (yeah?), were clearly saints; overworked, underpaid, unappreciated, on the front line to passengers who were justifiably angry or despairing. The one good thing shown in the programme was the new grafted-on western concourse at King’s Cross.

A curious structure, a lilac-tinted exercise in conic sections meets string vest meets Las Vegas, the new concourse provides additional space for would-be passengers to view the destination boards reading “Cancelled” and “Delayed”. Passengers who have managed to arrive on incoming trains are meanwhile channelled through the existing frontage of the station, and out into the street or down into the Underground. What goes against the historical grain with this development is that, traditionally, it was arriving passengers who had to be impressed, not those about to leave. Historically, railway companies competed to provide a grand entrance to the city, whether it be in size of trainshed, lavishness of hotel, or – in the case of Euston – Doric Arch, the legally vandalised remains of which lie, allegedly, beneath the River Lea.

With the arrival of mass air travel, effort and expenditure became similarly focused on impressing the new arrival, not just with the airport itself, but with the wealth and sophistication of the host city, region, or nation – hence Saarinen’s TWA terminal at JFK, the “steering wheel” at LAX, and the doughnut-shaped Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle. Ironically, though, arriving airline passengers typically get herded into low level immigration halls and baggage claim areas before finding their way out into town, and see little of the architectural wonders above. Instead it is the departing passenger, the anticipation of his journey artificially protracted thanks to procedures enforced in order to stymie those who would otherwise blow him out of the sky, who gets time to enjoy the architecture – at least from an internal perspective.

And this is the situation at King’s Cross where, in this respect at least, rail travel has now caught up with aviation. Once again, it is departure rather than arrival that is celebrated, and there is time and space to savour one’s imminent voyage of adventure, perhaps to Stevenage or Biggleswade, Peterborough maybe, or with any luck somewhere a little further north.

15 February 2013