St Pancras to get royal opening - 06-11-2007 - 11:03

London's St Pancras International station is to be officially opened by the Queen today following an £800 million restoration.

Work on the UK's single largest construction in history began in 2001 with the building of a 200 metre extension to the Victorian iron-work train shed.

Developer London & Continental Railways ensured the preservation of the William Barlow's marvel of construction and engineering.

Some 20,000 litres of English Heritage Barlow Blue paint were used to match the original colour on the ironwork.

But there are also modern touches to make the station what the developer called "Europe's destination station".

Every one of the 60 retail units has a passenger information screen, Wi-Fi is available throughout and travellers can use touch-screen monitors to buy tickets.

The undercroft below the train platforms has been turned into a shopping arcade naturally lit with four new light wells.

Trains arriving in the destination station will have passed through 11 miles of tunnels under London.

Pre-fab stations to cut delays and costs - 01-11-2007 - 17:12

Instead of taking months over construction works on train stations, Network Rail could use prefabricated glass and steel stations, the chief executive of the rail infrastructure company has said.

Ian Coucher yesterday submitted plans to the government for a renewal and expansion of the railway network at a cost of more than £10 billion pounds.

In the plans he envisions using the easily installed structures instead of renewing stations at great expense on site.

He told Reuters: "We can produce a high quality, high tech station for about a million pounds, with 13 weeks for installation, so there's minimum passenger disruption. The first one's going into a station in south London, at Eastfields, in the next few weeks."

Mr Coucher plans to install 25 pre-fab stations a year for the next ten years and the idea does not stop at stations.

"We're also looking at modular bridges and anything we can replicate," he said. "It's all about driving down the Railway's unit costs."