Track star for 2012

Stations used to be spartan places to hurry to and away from. If your train was late, then somewhere on a gloomy platform you would push through a scuffed door into a steamy café with vandalised red plastic seats. Staff would grudgingly dispense a cardboard cup of instant tea or coffee and a packet of crisps.

But it didn’t have to be that way. In the late 1960s I found myself on a cold night with other hitch-hiking companions from the Oktoberfest, at the Bahnhof in Munich. Here was a railway station reinvented as desirable destination – in effect a gleaming, polished-floor shopping mall with added trains. By British standards, it was a transport palace and just the spot to spend the night in (the police moved us on).

In the early 1970s, commuting weekly to work from York, I started to use King’s Cross regularly. Judged by the German yardstick, it was still in the horse and cart age. I think one café of the scuffed door sort stood to the left of Platform 9 and was usually closed for anyone heading for a York train mid-evening on Saturdays.

A new foyer which opened in 1973 brought a couple of burger bars into the foyer catering picture to the right of WH Smith. In terms of the passenger experience, this was the biggest single improvement for decades.

Passengers arriving at King’s Cross, now that the major phase of its £500m redevelopment has opened, come in on the familiar platform and exit the station at the southern end in the same way as before. But there’s no stress because this has become a one-way system that flows smoothly. It’s for arrivals only, so no more fighting your way through the queues of people waiting to get on their train. Departing passengers now flow in from the western side where all the architectural excitement is focused.

Arrivals see a train shed that looks much as it has always done although much cleaner. New ticket barriers to negotiate come as a surprise – all of them working.

But it does seem a regressive step, especially when the travelling ticket inspectors seem particularly efficient on the East Coast services. It’s a move which was successfully resisted at York station which remains barrier-free.

The southern concourse at King’s Cross is to be demolished next year. The glum 1970s canopy is to be cleared away in the autumn to make space for a new public square on Euston Road.

Once you have reached this point you have at your disposal six underground lines, Thameslink and domestic and international services from the adjacent St Pancras.

There’s no more going helter-skelter to the underground down the steps in front of the booking hall. Both have vanished. Instead you stroll into an immense subterranean area, new and spacious, which is London Underground’s new northern ticket hall. You may be heading down to that familiar greasy platform on the Piccadilly Line, but getting there now feels calm and slightly unreal.

It was Lewis Cubitt, mainly a successful bridge designer overseas, who had the job of creating the London terminus of the Great Northern Railway. Cubitt’s King’s Cross was opened to the public on October 14, 1852 and its clean no-nonsense lines contrasted with those of its immense gothic revival neighbour. St Pancras’s medieval extravagance seemed backward-looking.

Some 47 million people use King’s Cross every year and that’s expected to rise by a further 10 million in the next 10 years. There are some who travel to London just to view the station which is grade 1 listed. It appears in a dozen films including the Harry Potter series.

So something needed to be done to improve things. It’s only when you return to the station for the return train north that the scale and the ambition of the changes become clear. Entering to the left of the old entrance onto the new Western Concourse is a bit like stepping into a film set. Here is a dramatic, sweeping arena with a white lattice work flowing high above your head.

It’s quite breathtaking because the first impression is that this roof has no visible means of support apart from one central funnel column. In fact, it has 16 other discrete columns which add up to what must be the most beautiful lean-to in the world. The concourse forms a soaring steel semi circle against the old outside wall creating Europe’s largest single span station structure. The theatrical is emphasised by LED projectors which provide feature lighting of the roof beams – purple on the teatime when we were there.

It’s all a credit to the lead architects and master planners John McAslan+Partners who are leading the largest regeneration scheme in Europe. This is a £2.2bn investment that takes in 67 acres of adjoining brown field land.

The ground floor of the new concourse is well provided with places to eat and drink. An upper floor or balcony running the length of the building provides the main seating area which offers spectators a view almost as splendid as you’ll find in Grand Central Station in New York.

The whole thing is a superb show piece for Olympic year.

Passengers can reach their train by strolling along the balcony as far as another set of barriers . These open on to a bridge over the tracks and then down on to the platform and on to your train.

In doing this, you are crossing from the 21st century back to the 20th.

The train you board may well have first seen service 20 or 30 years ago and you will have paid twice for your journey: once for your ticket and once through your taxes.

The over-crowded privatised railway takes three to five times more in public subsidy, depending on how you interpret the figures, than in the days when it was owned by us.

Not such a thing of pride to impress foreign visitors.