The Meeting Place

Today's the day ...................... to catch a train

Off to Paris today - and that involved a Eurostar train from St Pancras station in London.

This is one of the several items of art on display to the public in this wonderful station. It's a 9-metre high bronze statue named The Meeting Place and it stands beneath the station clock. It was designed by British artist Paul Day and it is intended to evoke the romance of travel through the depiction of a couple locked in an amorous embrace.

St Pancras is a vast cathedral of a place and includes two of the most celebrated structures built in Britain in the Victorian era. The train shed, completed in 1868 by the engineer William Henry Barlow, was the largest single-span structure built up to that time. The frontage of the station is formed by the former Midland Grand Hotel, designed by George Gilbert Scott, an example of Victorian Gothic architecture, now occupied by the five-star Renaissance London Hotel and apartments.

After intensive renovations, costing in the region of some £800 million, St Pancras was officially re-opened as St Pancras International and the High Speed 1 service on 6 November 2007 by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh...............