Sweating the small stuff

I had occasion to take the train from London to Newcastle on December 9, the first weekday on which the route was operated by a new franchisee, National Express. It was amazing to see how quickly any trace of the former operator, GNER, had been eliminated. It's a mystery to me how they could have painted out the GNER name on so many trains so quickly, and replaced it with their own. Apart from a few on-board announcements where the steward momentarily lapsed back into the old name, GNER was completely expunged.

National Express is, of course, going to repaint all of the trains in a new colour scheme. This ritual is one of the most pointless aspects of the whole ludicrous franchise system. But it seems as if National Express has a fine eye for the telling detail. In the first class coaches, GNER had coffee cups on every table, with the cup inverted on the saucer. On the return journey yesterday, the hostess went through the entire carriage turning the cups right side up. When I asked her what the point of this was, she replied that this was how the new owners wanted it done from now on. You never got that kind of strategic thinking with British Rail.

As it happened, December 9 was also the first weekday of operation for the new suburban platforms at St Pancras International, which I had to pass through on the way to Kings Cross. It cost a reported £70 million to fit out this 2-platform station, on top of the cost of digging the hole in the first place. Obviously £70 mil' doesn't go as far as it used to: for example, it doen't stretch to more than two escalators per platform. There was a queue to use the up escalator even before 7 am, so what it will be like when they eventually reach their 24 train per hour goal can only be imagined.

The new platforms are at the far north-west of St Pancras International. The tube platforms are at the far south east. I suppose this does give you a chance to take a good look at the refurbished Barlow train shed, which is truly awesome. Still, it takes some doing to come up with a location that is less convenient than the sewer-like Kings Cross Thameslink that it has replaced. More attention to the big picture, and less worrying about colour schemes and coffee cups, is my suggestion.