London King's Cross railway station (London)

The London terminus of the East Coast Main Line (ECML), King's Cross (sometimes spelt Kings Cross - i.e without the apostrophe), is one of London's busiest stations serving long distance express services to York, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh, as well as local commuter services to Cambridge, Hertford and King's Lynn. The ECML which it serves has historically been Britain's fastest domestic railway line.

Location and environs
West of King's Cross are, in succession, St. Pancras, the new British Library building, and Euston station, all within a few minutes' walk. The present King's Cross Thameslink station is 5 minutes' walk to the east.

The new London terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is within St. Pancras. Eurostar trains arrive there now with the completion of Stage Two of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project.

Considerable regeneration effort has gone into the area in recent years, with the opening of new hotels and office space under construction.

Services
The station is served by routes from the north and east of England and Scotland in the UK, including Cambridge, Peterborough, Hull, Doncaster, York, Leeds, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness. King's Cross also incorporates the King's Cross St. Pancras Underground station, a major interchange station on the Underground network.

Three train companies run services into the mainline station:

GNER: inter-city services on the East Coast Main Line to Peterborough, Doncaster, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness.
First Capital Connect: services to Cambridge and King's Lynn, local services to North London, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Peterborough and Cambridgeshire
Hull Trains: inter-city services to Hull via the East Coast Main Line
A new company, Grand Central, plans to operate services on the ECML from King's Cross to Sunderland via Hartlepool.

History
King's Cross was originally designed and built as the London hub of the Great Northern Railway and terminus of the East Coast Main Line. It was designed by Lewis Cubitt and constructed in two years from 1851 to 1852, on the site of a former fever and smallpox hospital. The main part of the station, which today includes platforms 1 to 8, was opened on 14 October 1852. It replaced a temporary terminus at Maiden Lane that had opened on 8 August 1850.

The platforms have been reconfigured several times; originally there was only one arrival and one departure platform (today's platforms 1 and 8 respectively), with the space between used for carriage sidings. In later years as suburban traffic grew, space for additional platforms was added with considerably less grandeur; the secondary building now containing platforms 9-11 survives from that era. Since privatisation, express services into the station have been run by Great North Eastern Railway (GNER). The contract was renewed in 2005.

The King's Cross fire of 1987, in which 31 people died, was at the adjacent King's Cross St. Pancras Underground station. A major redevelopment of this Underground station (partly influenced by the report issued after the fire) was completed in 2009.

The original "King's Cross" was a monument to King George IV.

In 1972, a one-storey extension designed inhouse by British Rail was constructed in front of the station. While the extension was intended to be temporary, more than thirty years later it still stands. Many consider the extension unattractive, not the least because it obscures the Grade I-listed facade of the original station. Prior to the construction of the extension the station facade had already become hidden behind a small terrace of shops. This extension is scheduled to be demolished, revealing once again the full glory of the Lewis Cubitt architecture, when a new ticket hall and concourse area is built on the station's western side.

Restoration

An 1852 illustration shows King's Cross without the concourse extension, which is currently scheduled to be removed. In 2005, a £400m restoration plan was announced by Network Rail, though it has yet to be approved by the London Borough of Camden. Planned is a thorough restoration of the arched roof of the station and the demolition of the 1972 addition, to be replaced by an open-air piazza. A semi-circular concourse (estimated completion date 2009) is planned for the space directly to the west of the station behind the Great Northern Hotel that will be partially demolished. It will complement the neighbouring St Pancras Station, and replace the current 1972 concourse, shopping area, and ECML ticket office. The new western concourse will provide improved access to Underground services and direct link to Thameslink. The land between the domestic main lines leading from the two stations will be redeveloped with nearly 2,000 new homes, 486,280 m² of offices, and new roads as King's Cross Central.

King's Cross in Harry Potter
The Platform 9¾ sign occasionally causes congestion as tourists and Harry Potter fans stop to photograph it or try to push the rest of the luggage trolley through the wall.King's Cross features in the Harry Potter books, by J. K. Rowling, as the starting point of the Hogwarts Express. The train uses a secret platform 9¾ located by passing through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10.

Unfortunately, platforms 9 and 10 are in a separate building from the main station; also, rather than being adjacent so that a barrier could be between them, they are separated by two intervening tracks. Rowling intended the location to be in the main part of the station, but misremembered the platform numbering. During an interview in 2001, she indicated that she had confused King's Cross with Euston. In fact platforms 9 and 10 at Euston are also separated by two intervening tracks, so either she had yet another station in mind or else she simply did not consider or did not remember the physical arrangement of consecutively numbered platforms there.

When the books were filmed, the station scenes took place within the main station, with platforms 4 and 5 renumbered 9 and 10. In the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets film, the exterior of the adjacent St. Pancras railway station was used, as its Gothic façade was considered more impressive than the real King's Cross. Within King's Cross, a cast-iron "Platform 9¾" sign has been erected on a wall of the station's suburban building containing the real platforms 9 and 10. Part of a luggage trolley has also been installed below the sign; whilst the near end is visible, the rest of the trolley seems to have disappeared into the wall.

One of four stations on the London monopoly board game costing £200, after Whitechapel and before Angel Islington. Its US Atlantic City equivalent is Reading Railroad.

www.harrypotterplatform934.com/

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