Comments on The Trainshed

Womb/tomb. Cave/grave.

Nah. It's a gorgeous building. I actually consider it-- and many of the train stations around Britain --to represent the democratization of the architectural ideals suggested by Europe's Gothic cathedrals.

I'm with you Judah--I think it's fucking gorgeous. Though this does not at all alter my esteem and respect for Charles' opinions.

Penn Station looked sort of like that too, before madison square garden was built above it.

V!

EXACTLY. When you rock it, Charles, you really rock it.

Now he just needs to body rock it.

Is it older than Paddington? I love those old train stations. Whether or not they're exactly of the era, they all FEEL so Dickensian - which ads an air of class to my cleptomania.

Paddington is older, being built in 1838, though most of the modern station including the large shed was built in 1854 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (one of my personal heroes, not least for that magnificent name).

This is by William Henry Barlow, and was finished in 1868; Charles's date refers to the (mind-boggling) station buildings, by George Gilbert Scott. This was the largest single span roof at the time, though it has since been often surpassed since.

I don't have my railway stations book handy, or I would bore you with a great deal more on the history of iron span roofs, something of an obsession of mine (along with other cast iron goodness). I've even got a table of them somewhere. I think the largest in the US (more than twice as large as this) is Union Station in St. Louis. Count your blessings, I guess.

Note that the most amazing thing about this to a nineteenth-century visitor was not the iron but the glass.

And thank you, Charles. St. Pancras is absolutely one of the great cathedrals of modernity. I admire it much more than St. Paul's.

Personally, I think they were probably thinking more along the lines of how happy they were to have some protection from the elements while not being choked on engine exhaust.

But that's just me.

As Andrew mentioned, the original Penn station in NYC had a similar trainshed, but in its case, it was purely ornamental, as they used electric engines from the time it opened.

OK, I'll stop being a train dork now.

My first ever trip to London on the train, by myself at 18 ended up in St Pancras station.

I cant tell you how blown away I was to step out of the train into that amazing station - the air hazy with diesel smoke & the platforms heaving with commuters.

As i descended into the tube my hands were almost shaking with awe about being in a city that had a train station of that scale - and I hadnt even seen kings cross or paddington.... I'll never forget it.

The central mindfuck of my life will always be moving from Dazed-and-Confused L.A. to Tom-Brown's-Schooldays London in 1979. The stations - are they still? I haven't been back in 20 years - were FILTHY. The ledges supported a hundred years' worth of coal soot and cobwebs. There were old, old things on display in those stations, and people talking about the Blitz. The authority of these places was enough to erase all sunnier realities. Seems like a refuge now.

Grant, I just got back from an extended stay in London. I hadn't been back in 11 years, and the place has changed. The Blair/Livingstone years have totally "Americanized" the place. The train stations are clean, staff is helpful, there's a Starbucks on every corner. Much, much less fascintating and alluring IMHO than when I was there in the Thatcherite era. Now that was bleak! I used St. Pancras everyday then, now it's going through a huge remodel and will be the UK terminus for the Eurostar to Paris and Brussels by 2012. The new St. Pancras station, designed to handle traffic on the high-speed link to Paris and Brussels through the channel, is just the first step. The huge glass and white steel box awkwardly tacked onto the back of Victorian St. Pancras will soon form just part of a sprawling development on the site of the railway and canal lands. As one developer labours on a masterplan for a project that will match Canary Wharf in its scale, another has already opportunistically swooped in to take advantage of the possibilities offered by a shift in perceptions of the area that is already taking place. This is no longer an area dominated by the drug and sex trade.