London’s 598 railways stations have made the capital what it is

I began this book waiting for a diesel train to Derby, under the windy, boxy, flat-roofed bit which one of Sir Norman Foster’s team added to the back end of St Pancras station. At around 7 p.m. on a weekday only a dozen or so people were travelling. In the arcade below — built by the proud Midland Railway, as Christian Wolmar reminds us, to the dimensions of the Burton beer barrels the space was designed to store — shops are being boarded up. No one buys a new wheelie case or jewellery before catching a Eurostar to Paris anymore.

Among the many entertaining facts he has assembled, Wolmar calculates that London has 598 railway stations. There are mornings now when it feels as though that is greater than the number of peak-hour passengers across the city. These are bad days for our railways, and the shock is all the greater because they come after some of the best.

Just before coronavirus, the city’s stations were busier than ever, cleaner than ever and from London Bridge to St Pancras via Liverpool Street and King’s Cross, more beautiful and pleasant to spend time in than ever. I remember when the only diversion St Pancras had to offer was British Rail’s Shires Bar, all 1970s beige and brown with a stained carpet. Now the pub has become the glossy Sir John Betjeman, with an outdoor terrace where you can still (as I write) meet friends without breaking the law and look up at St Pancras’s wonderful clock tower and its rival ticking above King’s Cross.

Wolmar is one of the crotchety sort of railway lovers for whom nothing is quite as good as it used to be and the system is now run by idiots; but even he has to admit that the past had its problems.