Value engineering: descoping all the long term sustainability and nice to have for customer service elements of an infrastructure project back to its bare bones and probably becoming less-than-useful. See, HS2. Any good project manager builds in excess in order that it can be value engineered out without detriment to the scheme or its business case. An even better project manager bats off those attempts to reduce costs. Whatever happened at Brent Cross West station has resulted in a monolith waiting for some customers!
Opened in late 2023, this is a new station on the Midland Main Line (MML), served by Thameslink's stopping services between central London and St Albans City or Luton stations. It gets calls from the semi-semi-fast trains that otherwise only call at Mill Hill Broadway and West Hampstead Thameslink in London. It has entrances on both the east and west sides of the MML opening in to the boroughs of Barnet and Brent respectively, and is locatwd immediately south of Staples Corner on the North Circular Road.
West (Brent) Entrance
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| Walking from the North Circular takes you past this: who cares about pedestrians when there's car drivers to be kept out. Footpath narrowed to be almost useless and dropped kerb blocked. An absolute disgrace. |
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| There isn't much outside the Brent side. Some warehouses, and no regular bus service although there is a bus stand and when I visited a Metroline Enviro 200 taking a break, |
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| Despite there only really being warehouses, big box retail (so unlikely to use rail), the A5, and the North Circ outside, there's an impressive station entrance. |
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| And lots if cycle storage. |
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| West entrance |
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| Outside the west (Brent) entrance |
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| Stairs, up escalator and a lift lead to the overbridge/concourse level. |
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| Even at the west side everything seems to be on the east side! |
East (Barnet) Entrance
Whilst the west side got the brickwork, this side got the art, the purpose, the bus link, and two escalators!
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| Whilst the Barnet side got two escalators, in true Thameslink style one was out of service despite only being a few days old. |
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| This is Brent Cross town centre, an entire development yet to be built and presumably on which Brent Cross west station is predicated. |
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| at the moment, basically nowhere! |
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| Road to the north on the east sidem believe this is now open to allow 189s to turn around. |
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| East side, southbound, 189 buses started serving here in February 2024. |
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| Walkway to what will be Brent Cross town centre. |
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| Impressive entrance, with greater clearance over the running lines/over head wires than any other station in history. |
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| From the outside the wood gives a distinctly 'unfinished' appearance in my opinion. Maybe it will age well... |
Overbridge and ticket hall
This is one huuuge part of the station. I am a firm believer (in the right situation) of built it and they will come and I hope they do! Business cases and DfT funding aren't based on that though so there must be some firmer expectation that they will!
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| Entrance to Fast Line platforms. These are not usually served by trains stopping at Brent Cross West so have slightly less infrastructure (lifts/escalators) than the Slow Line platforms. |
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| Entrance to Slow Line platforms |
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| Overview of the paid side looking south |
Platforms
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| Unfortunately the people designing the station didn't align themselves with the people designing the train stopping locations, so this access to the slow line platforms meets the tail end of a northbound train. |
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| Platform signage repeatedly says 'stairs' when there are escalators available. Again the people designing the signage don't seem to have spoken to/understood the people designing the station. Oh and is there really a café? I don't recall one and not sure it would be particularly remunerative if there was one! |
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| Northbound train stops at the headwall which makes wheelchair/pushchair/cycle locations inconsistent between 8- and 12-car trains. Not the only location where the Thameslink project has got this inconsistency though, |
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| Plenty of customer infrastructure in the never-planned-to-be-used Fast Line platforms. |
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| View towards Brent Cross town centre development. |
What Do I Conclude
The station is huge and I really hope that demand will eventually justify it's size.
I have not researched the ultimate development at Brent Cross town centre.
Right now there are very few users.
£419m in cost!!!!!
Be nice if DfT/Network Rail/Thameslink showed Luton even a portion of that level of love!
