Station openings today

This weekend saw the opening of two new London stations, and the closure of another after 134 years.

The last ever train left King's Cross Thameslink last night around 1.15am (several minutes late), and the first ever train to call at St Pancras International arrived on time at 9.13am (earlier trains today called at neither, though did appear on the St Pancras departures board). The interior is a lot like City Thameslink, but with everything twice as big. Meanwhile, King's Cross Thameslink is now plastered with massive red "Do not alight here" signs. I was there for both events, but my photos were eaten by a shonky cheap memory card (don't do it kids), so you'll have to make do with this picture of a random train at St Pancras this afternoon.

Langdon Park DLR also opened this morning. When I passed yesterday afternoon the entrances were sealed off and it was swarming with men in orange jackets fiddling with the paving. But today the fences were gone and trains were stopping there, confusing at least a couple of passengers. As shown in the second picture, they've really gone to town with the footbridge roof. Disappointingly the station still has the standard DLR ticket machines that don't do Oyster.

At Stratford this afternoon, all DLR trains were using the north platform, rather than the south platform as they usually do. I'm not sure if this has been happening for a while or only started today, but at least both are now in use, though apparently not yet at the same time. The new footbridge from the old platform area is still sealed off, but appears complete (that's the rather unpromising Central Line/One end of it in the photo).

The King's Cross St. Pancras nexus - a novelty tube map

Just in time for the closure of King's Cross Thameslink and the opening of the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras this weekend, here is a complete diagram I've made of the whole complex, in the style of the tube map. It attempts to show every public passageway, escalator and entrance, and as far as possible it's geometrically as well as topologically accurate, so in a very approximate way the shape of the interchange blobs matches the shape of each interchange.

There are a few of the more obvious things I left out:

• None of the changes for the new King's Cross concourse are shown, though the new tube station passageways underneath it are.
• It shows all of St Pancras as open. The Circle and the coach station are not.
• Pancras Road continues further north.
• The public part of the mezzanine level at St Pancras is not shown, but there's very little on it of note.
• The temporary diversion of the passageway to the Piccadilly Line is not shown.
• I couldn't be bothered drawing separate lines for GNER/NX East Coast, Hull Trains, Grand Central, etc.
• It's in Gill Sans, not New Johnston.

Links: PNG | Zipped PDF

Hitachi A-Train on its way to the UK

The first train for Southeastern's forthcoming high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link services to Kent has completed testing in Japan and has been loaded onto a ship bound for Southampton. It'll arrive in August and begin testing on the network in October.

Transport Briefing has a pretty picture of the train and some more details, though they incorrectly state it can do 186mph (the line speed is indeed 186 mph, but the A-Train's top speed is only 140 mph). There's a picture of it being loaded onto the ship on the Southeastern site.

St Pancras rebuild

Fantastic detailed article from Arup about the St Pancras rebuild, written in 2004.