St Pancras International () is a major central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar services between the United Kingdom and Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It provides East Midlands Railway services to , Luton, , , , and on the Midland Main Line (or MML), Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via and , and Thameslink cross-London services to Bedford, Luton, , Cambridge, Peterborough,Horsham, Gatwick Airport and Brighton. It stands between the British Library, the Regent's Canal and London King's Cross railway station. Beneath both main line stations is King's Cross St Pancras tube station on the London Underground; combined, they form one of the country's largest and busiest transport hubs.
The station was constructed by the Midland Railway (MR), to connect its extensive rail network, across the Midlands and North of England, to a dedicated line into London. After rail traffic problems following the 1862 International Exhibition, the MR decided to build a connection from Bedford to London with its own terminus. The station was designed by William Henry Barlow, with wrought iron pillars supporting a single-span roof. At long by wide, and high, it was then the largest enclosed space in the world. Following the station's opening 1 October 1868, the MR built the Midland Grand Hotel on the station's façade. George Gilbert Scott won the competition to design it, with an ornate Gothic red-brick scheme. St Pancras has been widely praised for its architecture and is now a Grade I listed building.
St Pancras came under threat during the 20th century; damaged in both World War I and World War II by bombs, and then in the late 1960s by plans to demolish it entirely and divert services to King's Cross and Euston stations. A passionate campaign to save the station, led by the Victorian Society, Jane Hughes Fawcett, and Poet Laureate John Betjeman, was successful, and St Pancras was awarded Grade I listed status just 10 days before demolition was due to commence.
At the start of the 21st century, the complex underwent an £800million refurbishment to become the terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, commonly known as High Speed 1, as part of an urban regeneration plan across East London, and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2007. A security-sealed terminal area was constructed for Eurostar services to mainland Europe via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel, with platforms for domestic trains to the north and south-east of England. In 2016 services began to use the newly-constructed Canal Tunnels to access the below-surface platforms A and B from the East Coast Main Line. The restored station has thirteen numbered platforms, two lettered platforms, a shopping centre, and a coach facility. London St Pancras International is owned by HS1 Ltd and managed by Network Rail (High Speed), a subsidiary of Network Rail.
Location St Pancras is at the southern end of the London Borough of Camden on a site orientated north–south, deeper than it is wide. The south is bounded by Euston Road (part of the London Inner Ring Road), and its frontage is the St Pancras London Hotel, while the west is bounded by Midland Road, which separates it from the British Library and Francis Crick Institute, and the east by Pancras Road, which separates it from King's Cross station. The British Library is on the former goods yard site. Euston railway station is around ten minutes' walk away along Euston Road.
Behind the hotel, the train shed is elevated above street level and the area below forms the station undercroft which is where most of the shops and restaurants are located, along with the Eurostar departure lounge. The northern half of the station is mainly bounded to the east by Camley Street, with Camley Street Natural Park across the road. To the north-east is King's Cross Central, formerly known as the Railway Lands, a complex of intersecting railway lines crossed by several roads and the Regent's Canal.
Several London bus routes have stops nearby, including 73, 205 and 390.
Domestic station
Background
The station's name comes from the St. Pancras parish, whose name originates from the fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome. The station was commissioned by the Midland Railway (MR), who had a network of routes in the Midlands and in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire, but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital; subsequently, the company's Leicester and Hitchin Railway gave access to London via the Great Northern Railway (GNR).
In 1862, traffic for the second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; the route into the city via the L&NWR was also at capacity, with coal trains causing the network at and elsewhere to reach effective gridlock. This was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford, which would be just under long. Samuel Carter was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, which was sanctioned in 1863.
The main economic justification for the MR extension was for the transport of coal and other goods to the capital, which was hindered by a 1s 9d toll on GNR lines. A large goods station was constructed between 1862 and 1865, sited to the west of the King's Cross coal depot between the North London Railway and the Regent's Canal. Although coal and goods were the main motivation for the London extension, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London passenger terminus and decided it must have a front on Euston Road. The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by Earl Somers.
Construction
The passenger station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed on a site that had previously been a slum called Agar Town.
The approach line to the station crossed over the Regent's Canal at a reasonable gradient, meaning the platforms were above the ground level. (By contrast, the lines to the adjacent King's Cross station tunnel under the Regent's Canal.) Initial plans were for a two or three span roof with the void between station and ground level filled with spoil from tunnelling to join the Midland Main Line to the St. Pancras branch. Instead, due to the value of the land in such a location the lower area was used for freight, in particular beer from Burton. As a result, the undercroft was built with columns and girders, maximising space, set out to the same plans as those used for beer warehouses, and with a basic unit of length that of a beer barrel.
The contract to build the station substructure and connecting lines was given to Messrs. Waring, with Barlow's assistant Campion as supervisor. The lower floor for beer warehousing contained interior columns wide and deep, carrying girders supporting the main station and track. The connection to the Widened Lines (St. Pancras branch) ran below the station's bottom level, in an east-to-west direction.
To avoid the foundations of the roof interfering with the space beneath, and to simplify the design, and minimise cost, it was decided to construct a single span roof, with cross ties for the arch at the station level. The arch was sprung directly from the station level, with no piers. Additional advice on the design of the roof was given to Barlow by Rowland Mason Ordish. The arches' ribs had a web depth of , mostly open ironwork. The span width, from wall to wall was , with a rib every . The arch was a slightly pointed design, with a reduced radius of curvature at the springing points. The Butterley Company was contracted to construct the arches. The total cost of the 24-rib roof and glazing was over £53,000, of which over half was for the main ribs. The cost of the gable end was a further £8,500.
The single-span overall roof was the largest such structure in the world at the time of its completion. The materials used were wrought iron framework of lattice design, with glass covering the middle half and timber (inside)/slate (outside) covering the outer quarters. The two end screens were glazed in a vertical rectangular grid pattern with decorative timber cladding around the edge and wrought iron finials around the outer edge. It was long, wide, and high at the apex above the tracks.
Local services began running to the Metropolitan Railway junction underneath the terminus on 13 July 1868. The station itself opened to the public on 1 October. The first service was an overnight mail train from Leeds.
Early services St Pancras was built during a period of expansion for the MR, as the major routes to Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Carlisle opened during this time. By 1902, there were 150 trains arriving and leaving the station daily, though this was far less than at Waterloo or Liverpool Street. As well as Midland services, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) used St Pancras as a "West End" terminus for trains to , , between 1870 and 1917. At the turn of the 20th century, St Pancras had a faster service to than from King's Cross, at 71 minutes. GER services were suspended because of World War I and never resumed.
The London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) began boat train services from St Pancras from 9 July 1894, following the opening of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway. The trains ran from St Pancras to Tilbury via and . Tilbury Docks then provided a connection to Australia and Scandinavia. The following year, the LTSR began a service from St Pancras to . Boat trains continued to run from St Pancras until 1963, after which they were moved to Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street.
Grouping, nationalisation and privatisation
The Railways Act 1921 forced the merger of the Midland with the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and the LMS adopted the LNWR's (the "Premier Line") Euston station as its principal London terminus. The Midland Grand Hotel was closed in 1935, and the building was subsequently used as offices for British Railways. During World War II, bombing inflicted damage on the train shed, which was only partially reglazed after the war. On the night of 10–11 May 1941 a bomb fell onto the station floor at platform 3, exploding in the beer vaults underneath. The station was not significantly damaged, but was closed for eight days, with platforms 2–3 remaining closed until June. In 1947 the St. Pancras junction was relaid with prefabricated trackwork, along with associated changes to the signalling system.
On the creation of British Railways (BR) in 1948, St Pancras received a significant investment after neglect by the LMS. Destinations included the London area services to North Woolwich, St Albans and Bedford. Long-distance trains reached Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, with famous named trains including The Palatine to Manchester, The Thames-Clyde Express to Glasgow, and The Master Cutler to Sheffield (transferred from King's Cross in 1966, which itself had transferred from eight years earlier).
On 7 October 1957, the signalling at St Pancras was upgraded, replacing the three original boxes with a power box controlling 205 route switches and 33 points over a network of 1,400 relays. From 1960 to 1966, electrification work on the West Coast Main Line between London and Manchester saw a new Midland Pullman from Manchester to St Pancras. These trains and those to Glasgow were withdrawn following the completion of the rebuilding of Euston and the consolidation of these services.