WHY I LOVE THE SIGHT OF ST PANCRAS... FROM ONE DIRECTION

'Grumpy.... 'That's Betjeman .... not me.

Is it possible to love the look of a train station, airport or bus terminal from only one direction? I mean to enter at its southern end - and be awestruck by beauty and brilliance, yet remain disappointed and numb when passing through the same lofty building from the north …. Because I feel this way about London St Pancras.

This station is brilliant. I wax lyrical about it. Forget your Crosses both King’s and Charing – square and boring. Giant Waterloo may share its name with an epic battle but that’s also what you’ll face at its ticket machines and tube station. Tiny Marylebone can compete in the silly name stakes but I stand firm in my belief that shiny St Pancras is the daddy of them all. Look at the evidence. It has a champagne bar, a sushi bar and a burger bar… a giant statue of a couple kissing, a smaller statue of a grumpy poet, a toyshop, a bookshop, trains that go under the sea, fourteen thousand window panes in its roof and almost as many lost Frenchmen milling around beneath.

Still none of these things actually clinch it for me. Instead it’s the station’s solid structural connections to places I call home. I have a huge affinity with two cities, Glasgow and Derby. I lived, worked and set down roots in both and travel back to both regularly, passing through St Pancras every time. On every occasion – and with beautiful synergy – I see the Victorian façade, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott who also created Glasgow University - and then walk beneath the giant structural arch – supported by iron girders, forged in Derby. This place is built with ideas and materials mined from places I associate with strength. When it was bombed during the second world war, engineers from Central Scotland and the Midlands got it running again. Inevitably a mixture of pride, warmth and familiarity sees me onto the train with a smile on my face wherever I happen to be heading.

So why does the same building remain singularly unimpressive each time I return. The huge gilded clock bears down reminding you how late you are. 'This was once the largest indoor space in the world' but so what. For the traveller heading north to south it’s now merely a portal, you dash through focussing on what lies beyond, a hurried tube ride, London night out, tourist trip, reunion or just a warm flat at the end of a long journey.

It seems to me our perception of grand travel places alters depending on which stage of our journey we encounter them. I don’t know if this is something particular to London, Glasgow, Derby and me, or a real, widespread observable phenomenon. Can a similar effect be measured with New York’s Grand Central Station or Gare Du Nord in Paris? Answers on the back of an international train ticket please.