Steam – the grand old stations with great, arched ceilings reaching high into the sky now provide cover for trains that are electrified and, though we perhaps breathe easier, the romance has slipped a notch as the billows of mist from the iron beasts chugging in and out the station oozing viscous oil (like ersatz sweat and blood) provided a veil of mystery through a soft, gauzy lens. Electricity just isn’t the same; it might be clean but instead of the wonderful hiss from the release of pent-up boilers - a universal language of power that could take us over the highest mountain top - all we have now is vibration and buzz. 

But the engines themselves are sleek enough.  The aerodynamic noses speak of jet propelled speed rather than the snubbed and sooty frontage of the ancient black beauties and their mighty wheels that could get you there but slower with a hypnotic rhythm now banished in the ultra-modern smoothness of an age that requires things be fast and faster in a world shrunk in size by the terrible aeroplane.  Yet despite all this maudlin reminiscence by an aging man grasping at the lingering images of his youth, the romance of the rails still persists in the form of a monument to Brief Encounter in the superbly refurbished St Pancras International Train Station.