Europe gets closer as Queen opens St Pancras International station

13 April 2012

The Queen re-ignited the great British love affair with the railways last night as she opened the revitalised St Pancras station.

After an £800million facelift, the station's grand red-brick and steel interior has been restored to its Victorian-era glory.

As the new home of Eurostar, experts predict it will become the glittering centrepiece for a boom in international rail travel.

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Grand opening: The Queen officially opens the revamped St Pancras

The opening, alongside the launch of the £5.8billion high- speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link, will shorten Eurostar journeys to Paris and Brussels by 20 minutes.

It also brings Britain much closer to many other Continental destinations, making rail journeys shorter - and more convenient - than flying once airport check-in and security is taken into account.

As part of its refurbishment, the station has been fitted with state-oftheart technology such as wireless internet access, touch-screen monitors and passenger information screens.

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Remarkable rebirth: Train journeys to Paris and Brussels will be shortened by 20 minutes

It will also house the world's longest champagne bar and a daily farmers' market.

More than 150 years of dirt has been removed from the brickwork and a new roof has been fitted which comprises 18,000 panes of self-cleaning glass.

The front of the station, Sir George Gilbert Scott's neo-Gothic building, will open as a five-star hotel in 2009.

Work on the refurbishment began in 2001.

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A 21st century terminal: The new multi-billion pound look for St Pancras

Last night, the Queen offered her "warmest congratulations" to all those who were involved.

She said: "The remarkable rebirth of this great and gleaming station means that people across the whole of Britain, not just the South East, are suddenly quite a bit closer to Europe.

"My warmest congratulations go to everyone involved in this project, which is a wonderful illustration of what can be achieved through working in partnership, and it says a good deal about how we can take a 21st century approach whilst at the same time having due consideration of our heritage."

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Nostalgia: How the late Victorian station used to look

"Looking around me, I am filled with hope that people of all backgrounds and ages will greatly benefit from the quality and the attention to detail which is at the heart of this significant undertaking, and will come to regard St Pancras not just as a station but as a destination."

To mark the occasion, two Eurostar trains and one Hitachi Bullet Train arrived at St Pancras to music specially composed for the event.

Making their way along the platform to the nose of one of the Eurostar trains, the Queen and Prince Philip chatted to the drivers.

The 68-mile Channel Tunnel link, known as High Speed 1, runs from St Pancras to the tunnel opening at Folkestone in Kent.

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Work of art: The sculpture of a couple embracing is a landmark at the new station

The French had their high-speed link to the Channel Tunnel ready in 1993, a year before the tunnel was officially opened, while the Belgians completed their link in the late-1990s.

Britain, however, spent years dithering over the cost and route of its link, meaning that Eurostar trains could not reach their ultimate 186mph speed until they were on the Continent.

The Eurostar service will switch from London Waterloo to St Pancras on November 14.

WHEN GENEVA IS NEARER THAN INVERNESS

As these maps illustrate, train journeys from London to much of the Continent will now take less time than to many domestic destinations which are a similar distance away. Aboard the Eurostar, passengers can make the 293-mile trip to Paris in two hours and 15 minutes, an hour less than the journey to Carlisle. Early birds can now travel by rail to Geneva in time for lunch, with the 650 miles taking just six hours 40 minutes. In contrast, the train to Inverness, which is 100 miles closer, takes more than eight hours.

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