Great Western Coffee Shop

Are now available:

http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/eurostar.aspx

Already booked a business trip from Bristol to Brussels, for ^98. Colleagues were very impressed with cost and speed of overall journey. You can see why train is taking over from plane on these routes. Brussels traffic is up 30% since Nov 07, and much of that is due to regional connection bookings.

Yes it is great to see FGW and Eurostar making these through fares available. I was at St Pancras Intl the other week to catch an EMT service and what a great station that now is...very impressive.

Though the ambience of boarding a Paris bound Eurostar was somewhat spoiled by the Meridian idling noisily on the adjacent platform. 

I think that it is scandalous what they did to the station, and EMT - slapped a concrete box on the side and moved EMT there!

The rest of the station is wonderful though - hopefully I will get to visit soon.

Interesting views on the new/refurbished St.Pancras.
I tend to agree with Btline the Barlow train shed is superb although the vast empty space at the end of the Eurostar platforms but behind the glass screen is a great waste of circulating space. It's a pity Eurostar passengers only see it for a brief moment when they climb up to board their train or dive down to exit from their train on arrival.

As Btline says the EMT box is a scandel. Rain poors in between the old and new roofs, but worst of all there are only four platforms severely limiting the capacity of the staion and preventing a more frequent service on the Midland Mainline. Further you have to walk half way to Leicester to get the train as well.

It's good that FGW are issuing through fares, but presumably only to Lille Paris and Brussels. When I can get a through Taplow to Wernigerode, which is possible in a day, plus seat reservations, from Taplow station  then I might just be impressed. After all it's only linking computers.

 

Afternoon

Yes, have to agree that the Barlow trainshed at
St. Pancras station has been ruined somewhat by
an oversized greenhouse on the front of it.  Why
couldn't they have just left it as is, or have
canopies over the platforms only that are designed
to be more in keeping with the girders holding up
the trainshed roof?  Also I not a great fan of
the concrete platforms (couldn't they not re-used
the original brick with new London Stock mixed into
it to lenghten, or at least clad, not difficult
to find either).  Some ballest in-between the tracks
would look more in keeping as well.

In one or two journals it was stated that the colour
scheme on the girders is following the original,
which I would also question as being incorrect.

However that aside it does at least mean the Barlow
roof is secure and is given a good use, prehaps a
stactue of Barlow himself could be next holding
his plans and equipment whislt looking up at his
structure would be fitting?

And on the fares, a few years ago it was planned
to run a "Eurostar" service from Plymouth to
Waterloo, then onto France, but never happened!

Regards

Karl.   

No, I've just got a quote on Eurostar for a Bristol to Koln trip for tomorrow (returning Thursday) for ^335. I'm sure it would much cheaper if booked further in advance. Mind you, for that sort of trip you need to try the Man in Seat 61 to make sure you're getting the best price.

The following comes from a Daily Telegraph article published last November, when the station reopened. Makes quite clear where the blue comes from:
"Eighteen coats of paint have been stripped from Barlow's train shed, including a racing green, oxblood and a garish yellow.
What emerged was a pale blue, thought at first to be a primer.
Further research at the British Library revealed that this was the colour chosen by Barlow.
He believed the ironwork and sky should be seen as almost one piece."

But I expect the smoke from the Midland Railway's locos soon put paid to that idea.

Back on the subject of the through fares, does anyone know why there is only a limited selection of FGW stations where these apply? On Chiltern you can get them from pretty much anywhere, including such hotbeds of international travel as, er, Kings Sutton...

And if Kemble is included, then why not Charlbury? A far more likely source of a decent amount of Eurostar traffic, I'd suggest, than anywhere in Cornwall. And what about Maidenhead and Slough? I know they're near Heathrow, but surely the idea is to get people out of planes?

And the FGW website's Where Can I travel From? page actually lists 29 stations, with the full 32 only given on the drop-down list on the online bookings page. The omissions are Didcot Parkway, Newbury and Reading!

Morning

Willc, don't always believe what you read in newsprint
as its usually hived up, or wrong.  Blue??!!  You have
anwsered it with the "Midland Railway" which used either
Red and Yellow, the latter was replaced by white, but
in this case the girders should be Mildland Railway
Maroon.  Don't beleieve for one minute they ever used blue
on principal structures such as this for long.  They
did however use what they call eggshell colours mixed in
on pre-grouping railways a lot to make the colour mix up.
Although you have correctly stated that it would get black
very quickly!

Regards

karl.

Karl,

As a journalist, let me assure you that some of the stuff in papers is actually true and correct - or have your local papers been making up tales about a new passing loop at Penryn?

You appear to be suggesting that the Telegraph has invented the entire tale. Their story. like all the others mentioning the blue paint, was based on what they were told by London & Continental and the people who worked on the station. Of course, they could just have concocted it to mislead all us dumb journalists... in which case they did a first class job.

The following is from that well known sensationalist architectural journal Building Design:

"Graham Abrey, director of Ingram (heritage consultants), says: ^English Heritage wanted to retain the structure^s history, including its paint layering where possible, so we devised a method of stripping dirt and loose paint with first low and then high pressure water jets, while leaving well adhered paint intact.

^Paint analysis was conducted by cutting out a small section of paint and interrogating its layers under 500x magnification. This way we found the colours of the original paint and all those since. The pale sky blue paint used is very close to that applied in 1868. Barlow^s thinking was that when passengers looked up on a fine day, the structure would melt away into the sky.^

A bit of Googling later, I have found a recent article in Country Life, offering the following account:
"The pale blue paint is not the original, but a colour chosen by the general manager of Midland Railway, Sir James Allport, some years after the first opening, to replace the original red lead."

I'm no expert but would have thought red lead may have been applied to the ironwork as a basic rustproofing and undercoat anyway. A couple of other accounts suggest the arches were chocolate brown for a brief period, but one way or the other, it would appear that the blue DID have Midland Railway approval. Even if it was an act of wild optimism in environment full of coal smoke.

That problem no longer applies and of the two colours, I have to say I would pick blue for that ironwork ahead of brown any time.

And the Barlow shed does look magnificent, with a blue sky outside, or lit up at night. I hope the restoration of span 4 at Paddington is done to the same standard.

Afternoon

And a friend of mine works freelance for the nationals,
but even so papers/magazines have got things wrong
in the past at local and national level about matters
related to railways as well, not that I was critising
your standard of journalism anyway!

I still think that the blue they got down to is a
base coat (being the first trace they found), in
those days things wern't given two pack paint and
sprayed on, they were given base coats and several
top coats.  The LNWR railway gave their engines a
base coat colour entirely different to the top,
this was to get the desired top coat colour right;
eggshell undercoats and varnish were use used to
do this.

Your correct in the Midland railway using brown for
a very short perioed of time only.

Sorry this blue just doesn't sound right to me!  If
you can send a link to this article, I would be
interested in having a look at it.

Regards

Karl.

Afternoon

Sorry forgot to add tat the red lead is probably
the top coat of red, it would of been given oxide
coating underneath.

Regards

Karl.

Well, that looks like a fairly general criticism to me.

Links:

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=453&storycode=3094640 (http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=453&storycode=3094640)
http://www.countrylife.co.uk/culture/article/262090/St_Pancras_station_London.html (http://www.countrylife.co.uk/culture/article/262090/St_Pancras_station_London.html)