The very best trainset you could possibly wish for

Nostalgia, though often derided as a not particularly useful psychological process, is real enough. Proper nostalgia that is, not the commercial, cultish, fake, retro-biz. Sometimes what isn’t clear, though, is what nostalgia is actually for, why we feel it, how the process works, and what its reasonable limits might be. Is it for the loss of something long ago, or the loss felt now? Is there any difference between the two? I can’t offer any reliable answers, but here, I’ll use St Pancras as an example of some of the odd trains of thought that may be encountered. Pun sort of intended.

The vast trainshed and adjoining hotel that make up St Pancras Station constitute a national treasure that not so long ago was in danger of being lost. Its miraculous survival constituted a subversion of the then dominant modernist zeitgeist accompanying the swinging heyday of post-blitz London. An unexpected victory it was, one that upset the progressive status quo, the attitude which Sir John Betjeman – hero of the hour – viciously dubbed “withitry”. In the early Sixties nearby Euston and its Doric arch were the sacrificial victims catalysing the moodswing sufficient for St Pancras to survive. It was a close shave. Even today I expect there are still people around who would happily demolish it for financial gain - if not out of aesthetic rage and stylistic revenge - given half the chance.

Well, here we are, half a century on. However, even with its imaginative rebirth – its grand reopening in 2007 with an “International” appendage - what that survival means can perhaps be re-examined, slightly critically, some might say with a modicum of jaundice. Doing so may illustrate a little of how nostalgic processes, feelings and motivations operate. I should emphasise, of course, that I’m very glad that physically St Pancras is still with us, and that it’s such a wondrous place to start a journey into Europe, as well as to Kent or to the East Midlands – and equally to return to.  

Now then, suppose you have an affection for St Pancras, what form does this take? Is it to do with architecture, or railways, or something - since we’re talking European  here - more outré? Is it some personal connection you have, a bit of a thing about  gothic, a love of  trains, a historical sensibility, a romance with the whole idea of travel? Do you like it as it is now? Do you prefer it as it was? Do you lust after both? Depending on your answer, it may or may not be the huge arched trainshed for which you are passionate or nostalgic (stained and sooty rather than revamped in a sunny shade of  Wedgwood), or the former Midland Grand Hotel at the front of the station (now splendidly renovated), but something else.

Perhaps something more ambient, shall we say, an ache for the whole atmosphere of the area as, for very many decades, it used to be. Is it contents or contexts, or both, that you crave but cannot have? Midland Road, fog and coal dust? Perhaps a sneaking admiration for the cluster of gasholders (Doric again), the mysterious and possibly dodgy businesses operating from the murky arches beneath the platforms, the seedy tenement blocks and alleys off Pancras Road (alluded to in Orwell’s “1984”), or any number of features which helped to generate such an intensely noir atmosphere for this part of the city.

For noir is the word, in any language. Appositely, that great early psychogeographer Ian Nairn (1930-1983) commented that the only true colour for the station was jet black. He was right, of course, perverse though it is to insist after the thorough and brilliant makeover by Alastair Lansley et al. And not only the station. Noir all around; surround-noir. In the immediate environs, until redevelopment, well … you might score something unusual, get solicited, mugged, murdered, you might jot down a rare engine number …  

Unfortunately, sadly, no longer. Today you can only imagine, and sigh. Despite the efforts of local action groups, little remains. A few gasholders have been cleaned up and reassembled in a new and spectacularly irrelevant context, that of luxury apartment living. As in (Q) “where do you live?” (A) “Inside a gasholder”. Gasholder N1. Mm. Terrific. Close by, novel opportunities are springing up for Retail and Refreshment, right next to the Regent’s Canal with its pleasure and leisure barges. This part of London was always good at R and R. Somers Town coalyards are now a depot for knowledge – the British Library and the Sir Francis Crick Biomedical Centre. On the other side of the tracks, colleges of art and galleries of illustration, a local HQ for Google, a German restaurant. Who would want to argue with that?

The station has been saved, but what if it’s the whole lot that you want to preserve, the way of life it represented, the people who passed through, in 1868, or 1890, or 1939, or 1955, or 1987, or 2005 ... ? Are you satisfied with just the station or do you need to pickle the entire past? Do you need pickled people too? Pickled Mum and Dad? Pickled grandparents? Do you want to sling out the books and the students and the researchers and bring back the smoke and the lowlifes? Does the pickling extend across Euston Road, up into Islington, across to Camden Town? Where does it end? Pickled London, pickled England? A pickled planet?

This is the proper nostalgia, isn’t it. It hurts too much. The past has gone for ever, and there’s no adequate way of holding onto it or bringing it back.

Sensitive conservation tries not just to preserve individual buildings but the character of their setting too, the entire neighbourhood and way of life. Laudable though this is as a theoretical objective – even if unsubtly themed, heritaged and quartered - to anyone with feelings and imagination it is unlikely to succeed in any meaningful way, and it certainly hasn’t happened at St Pancras. Anyway, it’s too late now. The crucial life saving operation has been successful, survival will continue, but although the patient is recognisable and functions well, he’s no longer quite the person he once was. Never mind. Be grateful for what you see around you. It’s better than most.

The blunt-nosed whining Eurostars unload their passengers, load up, and whine off again towards their long tunnel. A whole new range of human associations has been created or encouraged – and the process continues. The station itself has (like many prime transportation nodes) become a significant retail outlet, complete with farmers’ market, champagne and sushi bars, high end confectionery, a pub named after Sir John Betjeman with an ambience and a clientele he would hate, free pianos (one donated by Sir Elton John) on which to show off one’s tonkering abilities before boarding. Outside, the dubious auto repair shops, the pushers and the streetwalkers have had to move somewhere else. No one was going to slap a preservation order on them. Observe the Betjeman statue, which is convincing (although he does look more than slightly like a lost Paddington Bear newly emerged from darkest Peru, only at the wrong terminus). Less good (subjective judgement) is the rucksack-bearing double sculpture by Paul Day officially known as “The Meeting Place” but sometimes unkindly dubbed “The St Pancras Bomber”. However, enjoy.

But it’s not the same.

The urban context of St Pancras has been transformed to the extent that – from a nostalgic agenda – it is effectively destroyed. We have the physical context, the roof and the platforms, the brickwork vigorously scrubbed, the concourse and the hotel and all the rest of it bustling, thriving, humming. Everything else is irretrievable. Even how it looked inside is hard to recall since the dramatic internal rearrangement (the heroic atrial surgery) of the station’s facilities – the dark and dingy ticket hall, the gents’ loos with their strongly odoured disinfectant crystals and urinals clustered geometrically around supporting columns, W. H. Smith’s in the corner, the ancient smell of mailbags, the two flights of narrow, pokey steps twisting down towards the Underground, the incomprehensible echoing announcements … “will be calling at Market Harboroughboroughboroughough …”

In a sensible frame of mind we know that we can’t formaldehyde an entire neighbourhood, and we can’t halt time, especially in such a valuable location location location as St Pancras. To wish otherwise isn’t merely perverse, isn’t merely wanting to play at model railways, to play at trains. It’s akin to playing God. Perhaps that’s exactly what we want to do. Sometimes it’s good not to be sensible.