Discussion: Towards New Records - London St Pancras
- Matthias Beckh
Early in the morning on October 1, 1868, the first train rolls into St Pancras Station - the world's largest enclosure, just completed after a two-year construction phase. The great hall is - aside from the Eiffel Tower and the Firth of Forth Bridge - one of the most important iron structures of the 19th century. To this very day, the space created by the lacy arched trusses has an uplifting effect, and the structure is timelessly elegant. This first train departed from Leeds and required a good six hours to travel the 300 km stretch. Today the trip from London to Gare du Nord in Paris takes only 2 hours 15 minutes. Due to the decision to relocate the terminal station of Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) from Waterloo Station to St Pancras Station, the latter has been renovated, adapted to meet the new requirements, and expanded. About 100 years after the invention of the spinning-jenny by James Hargreaves and the refinement of the steam engine by James Watts - two technical achievements that, next to the smelting processes used to produce iron, are among the industrial revolution's most important achievements - Great Britain is at the zenith of its economical and political expansion. It is the middle of the 19th century, and the English railroad industry - the world's oldest - is booming. The countless networks of tracks operated regionally are linked, their density increased; the number of passengers is rising rapidly. Midland Railway, based in Derby, Central England, serves the region between Birmingham, Carlisle and Manchester, and needs, due to its ambitious plans for growth, its own terminus station in London. The site, Agar Town, is a run-down residential district between Regent's Canal and the present-day Euston Street situated directly west of King's Cross, the terminus station of the competitor Great Northern Rail. Midland's intends to set an example, and to top the recently complete terminal stations of the other major operating companies - Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Paddington Station (1854), John Fowler's Victoria Station (1862) and Lewis Cubitt's neighbouring King's Cross Station (1852). As is typical of the time, the design spheres of the engineer and architect are to a large degree separate. The vast train sheds are conceived and developed by engineers as functional, pragmatic structures, while the buildings facing the city are designed by architects. The engineer William Henry Barlow, who has been engaged by Midland for years, is charged with planning the large train shed; he receives support from his colleague Rowland Mason Ordish. The planning is already underway when the competition is held for the station building with ticket hall and the obligatory adjoining grand hotel. The winner is George Gilbert Scott, a Gothic Revivalist who has just been selected to design the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. The train station itself consists of an arched roof situated above an undercroft. The roof's 73.2-metre span breaks all records. Two centuries later, Rail Link Engineering (a consortium made up of Bechtel, Ove Arup and Partners, Sir William Halcrow and Partners, and Systra) is commissioned to direct the work necessary to relocate the CTRL to St Pancras. In addition to the refurbishment and adaptations, in order to provide shelter to the long platforms, it was necessary to make an addition to the hall: this new structure, situated to the north as foreseen in the master plan prepared in 1997 by Norman Foster, is noteworthy primarily for its unobtrusiveness. The focus was placed on fulfilling the functional requirements - the design does not attempt to take "centre stage".
