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Ian Fry above King’s Cross |
King’s Cross station revamp ‘will be even better than St Pancras’
Project boss says £450m plan will produce rail gem
IT will usurp St Pancras’s status as the jewel in the nation’s railway network and become a new British landmark, according to the man overseeing the renovation of King’s Cross train station.
Ian Fry, project director at Network Rail, is the man behind the £450million revamp of the mainline station, and in an exclusive interview with the New Journal, he claimed that when the project is completed it will trump the much-celebrated St Pancras.
During a behind-the-scenes tour of the station, Mr Fry said: “St Pancras set the bar really high in terms of refurbishment, but we are going to do something better.
“When you look at St Pancras, all the celebrated imagery is Victorian architecture, but the size of the station has doubled, and the new additions, the modern architecture, is at best forgettable.”
Work to build a new concourse to the west of King’s Cross – sitting opposite St Pancras – is well under way, while the Eastern Range, a wing that runs along York Way, is now completed.
The tatty dark green shelter currently tacked onto the front of Thomas Cubitt’s 1852 station will also go, revealing how the station would have looked when it was first built.
Mr Fry said: “The Cubitt facade will look fabulous and the new western concourse will become a true new landmark for London.”
The station is having a new platform built to cope with extra demands in the future. It currently has around 40 million passengers a year and that is expected to rise to 55 million by 2019.
But campaigners calling for a new footbridge linking St Pancras Way and York Way at the northern end of the station’s sheds have been told the idea is not feasible.
The new platform blocks a shortcut through the station that had been used for decades. But Mr Fry said the station’s redesign would lead to huge improvements in surrounding streets.
“We have pledged £1m to Camden Council to be spent solely on doing up York Way and making it friendlier,” he added. “That is a substantial amount of money.”
While architect William Barlow’s huge roof catches the eye in St Pancras, King’s Cross will also see its iron girders and glass cover renovated, and the expanse of glass used to make the station eco-friendly.
Designers have chosen a section of the roof to double up as solar panels, generating around 10 per cent of the energy needed to run the station. |
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