Trains from St. Albans to St. Pancras International
Trains from St. Albans to London (and stops beyond including Brighton, Wimbledon and Gatwick Airport) now call at St. Pancras International.
The redevelopment of the station, as well as the building of the high speed rail line which serves it, cost over £6 billion and was the largest construction project ever undertaken in the UK.
First Capital Connect, the rail franchise operator, has further information on how the new routing will affect travelers between London and St. Albans.
Having changed at St. Pancras myself this morning, I was somewhat surprised by how long the walk is between the First Capital Connect platforms and the London Underground. Travelers should expect this interchange, which would have previously taken around 5 minutes, to take double that. At peak times, travelers may face further delays at the Kings Cross ticket barriers which, even before the re-routing of passengers making the interchange, is sometimes closed due to overcrowding. Sure, it’s far more civilised to disembark and walk through this lovely station but it isn’t going to shave any time off the typical commute from St. Albans to London.
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That’s really interesting that by the sounds of it they’ve made it more difficult for FCC passengers to commute or otherwise travel into London. However I don’t think it’ll make much difference to passenger numbers.
One thing I’m still puzzled by is the difficulty in travelling north by train from St. Albans. I moved away to be a student in Manchester for three years and now live in Leeds, and have always had to go via Watford and Hatfield respectively.
I guess the convenience of travelling into London by train beats a car where the M1 beats a train heading to the chilly north!
It’s true that changing does seem more difficult at St Pancras – it *is* marginally quicker to the Hammersmith&City/District/Circle lines than before, but longer by some way to the Piccadilly/Northern/Victoria. And in any case, it’s *always* been quicker if you want Ham&City/District/Circle to stay on till Farringdon and change there (even if you want to go back the other way – the extra few mins on the train is quicker than the walk).
For Picadilly/Northern/Victoria, I’ve found though that if you ignore the signs and instead head to Kings Cross mainline and in that way to the Underground, it’s quicker than following the signed route. All will be better in 2009 when they finish the new Northern Ticket Hall – in fact that’s the main problem with much of this station – bits of it aren’t finished on time (the ‘lounge’ for First Class on the Eurostar is *still* not open; most of the much vaunted shops will only open over the next few months etc and the cycle-racks are’t yet in place (disappointing given the green credentials of Mayor Ken!).
Final thought – changing trains may be no quicker, but I’d certainly rather wait on this platform than on the old Kings Cross Thameslink one for the late night ‘vomit comet’ – for a start, this one doesn’t stink of wee!
But it is really lovely to walk the length of that gorgeous trainshed on the way to a meeting!
I agree with previous comments. No matter that the way is a bit longer, it is so infinitely more pleasant!! I no longer dread of having to wait for the train at night in that horribly depresing platform at the Thameslink station.