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If there is anyone on the forum who is interested in trains (!), they may want to watch BBC2 at 10pm - a behind-the-scenes look at the rebuilding of St Pancras station.

Top man Andrew!

I want to watch this

Genuinely fascinating stuff, has taken years and years and years..I used to have to have to get to work through the chaos!

Fascinating. (Another installment tomorrow)

If I were to have predicted the first three people to reply to this thread I'd have hit the tricast.

Architects..bloody perfectionists, crying over a 2 inch misalignment lolol

Nice to know there are some people who do things for the love of it though. I bet they wouldn't have accepted a 2in misalignment in the 1860s

true. However six figure bonuses for the bosses weren't on offer if project completes on time then either!

Bloody nancy more like. How on earth is he gonna solve anything by crying like a baby?

Cracking views of the wonderful building, though. I could marry that slate roof.

I can't cast a stone here, I'm not without sin.

Good for you Red - it takes a real man to cry or eat quiche.

I cry if I have to eat quiche.

Greenpeace held a protest at St Pancras Station today

The purpose of the protest was to make the public aware of the success of the revamped station and to get more people to use it to get to Paris and Belguim  and to stop using the airports

Ahh, a sort of anti-protest protest then?

There protest was against Heathrow and Gatwick

Instead of being negative in there protest they decided to promote a govt success

Partial success

the panels are 2in out of whack on the East Side

Can we get the detail right please Jim? The protest was not at St Pancras, it was at St Pancras International. The latter is the Eurostar Terminal for Europe. The former serves Midland Mainline, which serves Derby, Nottingham, Leeds, Burton-upon Trent etc, with stops at Luton Parkway (for the Airport), Luton, Bedford, Kettering, Wellingborough, Market Harborough, & Leicester (interestingly, all MM trains stop at Leicester &/or Derby & Nottingham). Oddly, the Nottingham trains leave Nottingham from the same direction from whence they came, (it's a dead loop) so forward facing passengers find themselves facing backwards. They use a mixture of plastic "Meridian" sets, (4 & 8 car), & HST hauled 8 carriage slam-door rakes. (Not too many slam-door rolling stock left these days). The HST's have been in use since the 70's, & are the most charismatic & beautiful Diesel Locos in use today. Though hardly "green", spewing out, as they do, oodles of filthy diesel exhaust.

PS - Corby is no longer used, you get off at Kettering & a MM Bus takes passengers to Corby.

Hasnt the ownership of the track to the midlands also recently changed hands.  I believe you can now buy a ticket from Nottingham to Paris

tikay forgot to mention Long Eaton.

tut tut


 

Sheesh, I'm suitably embarrassed - & I forgot Loughborough, too! How COULD I forget Loughborough (for East Midlands Airport).

Sigh. No, not at all. The track is in the ownership of Network Rail, (& thus effectively, Central Government), who levy Access Charges to the TOC's. (Train Operating Companies). The Midland Mainline Franchise, however, is about to be terminated, to be replaced by dual new Franchises, East & West Midlands. Another case of the SRA, together with ATOC, PTE's & RFOA interfering in things they don't understand at all. One despairs.

A while ago an Antipodean friend of mine was sent to work over here, based in Nottingham

I asked him where the company house he was renting was, and he replied

"looga barooga"

"Pardon?" I said

"Looga Barroga" he said "between Nottingham and Laysester"

"You mean Loughborugh?" I said

"No, Looga Barooga" he said

I then spelt it out for him......we were talking about the same place

Loughborough - home of the biggest joke university of them all. Thousands of people all doing degrees in PE which, as you can imagine, gives them a slight edge when it comes to the inter-university sporting competitions.

A sign on Leicester Station welcomes visitors to "Leicester, home of the National Space Centre". Bet that's well busy.

Near me in Ongar there is a sign directing you to the secret nuclearr bunker

the National Space Centre is well dandy! Kids loved it

Dad did not enjoy the cost of admission!

Hush now, it's a secret.

That is truly bizarre.

i remember once seeing an email with a load of stupid pics like that one

My fav i think was a big sign   saying Tattoos while you wait

I live close to the Cardington Airship hangars, a pair of fantastic structures

The sign outside currently reads "Keep out, By order of Batman"

My favourite sign:

These are superb.

Damn right!

Corby hasn't had a train station for years now.  But that's going to change as the green light has been given for a new station to be built.  Not sure if it's going to be on a different mainline to Kettering though - it would make sense if it was.

Corby is the largest town in Europe without a train station. 

It also only has one nightclub, the lowest percentage of graduates in the town's population of any town in the UK, the highest percentage of people off sick in the UK, one of the best state schools in the country, a population made up of many first and second generation Scots (the typical Corby accent is Glaswegian), and was the place I spent my teenage years, and in 2001 had a population of a little under 55,000.  With all the new house building in Corby, the population might possibly double by the year 2020.