St Pancras station sees more ticket gates installed as part of improvement work
St Pancras station has seen further ticket barrier installed by East Midlands Railway.
In addition to five standard gates and two wider barriers, EMR relocated its ticket office to create a new Travel Centre and Assistance Lounge besides Platform 1–4.
Aside from Eurostar, Southeastern’s HS1 and Thameslink the station has domestic EMR services on the Midland Mainline to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield.
Electrification has been undertaken as far as Corby and work is underway north of there in advance of EMR seeing new trains.
Access
Reaching St Pancras is now a lot easier for those south of the river. Thameslink services now run direct from the Woolwich line but even those on other lines can change at London Bridge for far more frequent trains to St Pancras than existed until recent upgrade work.
I recall the days of four trains an hour trundling into London Bridge and being absolutely packed under First Capital Connect. It’s now 11+ trains per hour.
Philippa Cresswell, Customer Service Director at East Midlands Railway, said: “These improvements at London St Pancras International will be great for customers.
“The new Travel Centre and Assistance Lounge provides customers a one stop shop to buy tickets or get help completing their journeys and the assistance space provides a clear location for those customers requiring additional support.
“The new ticket gates will also allow us to improve efficiency during busy periods, ensuring customers can board and disembark quickly and with ease.”
Work has been funded as part of an agreement with High Speed 1 (HS1) with work undertaken between EMR, Network Rail, and HS1.
That whole EMR area upstairs at St Pancras is absolutely diabolical: nowhere decent to sit, constant diesel fumes, overeager staff trying to catch people out for any kind of ticket discrepancy, nothing of any interest whatsoever. It’ll take more than a few more ticket barriers (whoopee!) to make it hospitable.
Yep it’s pretty crap. At least the diesel fumes will go when the new trains are finally introduced (whenever that is!).
Maybe they should also invest into the Eurostar area. Since Brexit reduced services and reduced capacity on trains. Easy growth story. Expand the check-in area and increase frequency and capacity back to normal and use Stratford as a starting point