The Uncertainty Principle

Ruskin was wrong about train stations as he was about so many things. The old Victorian train stations are brilliant, and should be celebrated, heroic and romantic gateways to cities that they are.

I grew up in a car-less household. My parents weren't environmentalists or anything, they just never learnt to drive. Family holidays, therefore, always began and ended with trains. From an early age therefore, I associated train journeys with holidays, excitement, cola, 'brunch muffins' and headlong dashes with those cumbersome luggage trolleys.

Many weekends you'll find me heading to the West Country from Paddington. Daily, I'll tube it or train it into Euston and walk past King's Cross and St. Pancras on my way into work. The experience of rail travel itself is often marred by human incompetence, filth and error. But forget all of that. Most big railway stations are remarkable achievements.

They constitute truly post-modern experience, where Victorian architecture mixes with modern retail units. Fast food vendors and forlorn cafe bars create an environment where to travel is to arrive.

Who could not feel a rush of adrenalin as you step off a First Great Western train into the grimy, awesome expanse of Paddington station? I don't give a toss about the trains themselves, they're dull. But Lo! That space! The vaulting ambition of Brunel! The mighty wrought iron arches that form this temple of travel! Amazing.

Okay, getting through the automatic ticket barriers is always a trial, but once you are through you are ushered back into the modern world. Sheet glass. White plastic. Yes, you will do well here. You will eat sushi here. This is Livingstone's London. The city for you. Well, you and a load of people determined to annoy the shit out of you with their luggage and loud voices. But that is by the by.

Behind its ghastly frontage, King's Cross keeps it vintage. Keeps it plain. It was designed in plain stock brick by Cubitt. Deliciously understated and simple, it was put up quite quickly. It serves as a excellent counterpoint to all the pomp and finery of St. Pancras, which was fronted by George Gilbert Scott's 250-bed Midland Grand hotel, with its distinctive red brick and elaborate gothic style. The once luxurious hotel closed in 1935, when it was converted to offices, before it was abandoned all together. Though in line with all the regeneration of King's Cross as a new cosmopolitan transport hub, there may be future for the hotel beyond being that place where the Spice girls filmed the 'Wannabe' video.

Euston is by far and away the Lowlight of my daily commute. The original station fitted with my vision of what London stations all should be: august gateways to the new Rome. Euston used to have a 72 ft Doric arch supported by fluted columns with the word 'Euston' etched into the top:

Some time in the 1960s, British Rail insisted it needed to demolish the arch to extend the platforms and create a viable modern station. It was pulled down and rebuilt a new. It now looks like this, but with more dirt.

Oh, and the platforms were never extended after all.