A sleek Eurostar train glides to a halt beneath St Pancras station's magnificent span. It's only a test run, but this arrival heralds a rebirth of the long-lost era of railway romance.
Workmen are putting the finishing touches to an £800m refurbishment of the once-neglected Victorian station - hailed as the greatest of its kind, but almost lost to the developers' bulldozers in the 1960s.
When St Pancras International opens in 100 days' time, on November 14, Eurostar journey times from London to Paris will be cut to 135 minutes. Our lumbering railways will finally be linked to Europe's high-speed network.
More than that, for passengers whose experience is standing armpit to armpit in overcrowded cattle trucks, limping in and out of utilitarian stations, St Pancras will put some fun, even glamour, back
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robert nicosia gets a sneak preview
of the new international
station, opening
in 100 days’ time |
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into rail travel. Layers of smoke, coal dust and diesel fumes have been removed from St Pancras's brick, glass and cast iron to reveal the grandeur of engineer William Henry Barlow's design, first opened in 1868.
To his muscular Victorian vision has been added a new millennium sleekness. Among the almost 1,000 cast-iron pillars holding up the tracks and concourse are shops, bars, restaurants, and even a farmers' market. All of these have been built into Barlow's vast 'undercroft' - originally used as storage for barrels of beer arriving from the Midlands.
Passengers will travel up to the trains by escalator, emerging into Barlow's famous trainshed - at 243ft, still the biggest
single span of cast ironwork in the world. Restaurants are opening up in the brick alcoves, and the longest champagne bar in Europe will run alongside one of 
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