The LNER Encyclopedia

Unusually for me approaching Kings Cross from the front (I normally cross from St Pancras into the side entrance) a couple of things puzzled me.
One is the curious fact that the stylish restored front has only exit doors; the entrance is through a modern large conservatory type bit.
But the thing that most puzzled me was this;

To the left of the entrance is a refurbished building that now contains a bar (or it might be restaurant)

It's called the "Plum & Spilt Milk"

Has someone not done their railway homework? Or has someone relied on Wikipedia being right?

Because, of course, the railway that had coaches painted light cream and deep maroon - often described as "Plum and Spilt Milk" was the LNWR not the LNER.

I suppose there must have been some of the short lived BR liveried plum & spilt milk carriages on services from Kings Cross in the late 40s/early 50s, so maybe they can be forgiven for that link.

Well.

"Blood and custard" might be tempting fate as a title for licensed premises serving food....


auldreekie

The 13:00 Kings Cross to Edinburgh returned from there as 13:45 Edinburgh to Kings Cross so needed two sets of Coaches. One was painted in Plum & Spilt Milk, the other in BR chocolate & cream.

Felix

Plum & Spilt Milk sounds to me like some dumb name dreamed up by some twentysomething marketing bloke with zero reference to railways. It's the same sort of fanciful naming that goes on with developers who build tacky housing estates in the middle of towns with monikers like 'Aspen Vistas' or 'The Cascades of Willowglen' with nary a glimpse of a waterfall or tree in sight.

The Refurbished building is the Great Northern Hotel

Steve

So what's the problem with The Great Northern Hotel??????

Nowt.

I went passed Kings Cross station yesterday afternoon around 2:50pm on the top deck of a no.390 bus going up York Way and glancing across to the railway wot a sad sight it has all become these days?. No trains were seen moving either into or out of the station plus All the platform ends were empty (no army of spotters at the end of no.10 or no.8 platform) and there was even WEEDS growing everywhere around the 'throat area' north of the platform ends and Gasworks tunnel?.

45 years ago it was oh so different!!.

Mickey

I haven't been to the Cross in almost as many years, Mickey. I think I'd be scared to look. I feel your pain.

Funny, I saw an old aerial view of 'wonderland', aka Top Shed and the general area, then I was looking at Google Maps' aerial view and I said to my daughter, "I wish you could see what I see, there." And she replied, "But it was so dirty. Must've been a horrible place to live and work."

Oh well.

When it comes to 'the cross' giner I have a strange 'detached feeling' about the whole area these days when I sometimes pass through it considering at onetime back in the very late 1960s & the first half of the 1970s Kings Cross station was virtually a second home to me back then and to prove how the station area and the rebuilt Kings Cross Goods yard area have changed over recent years compared to wot they use to be like 40-50 years ago it's even become a 'trendy place' to live, work & relax in now??.

Mickey

G'day Gents

Thankfully, living 12,000miles away I don't have to see what's happened, to what was once a busy vibrant station/workplace.

manna

Wasn't the old pasty & sandwich 'shop' at Kings Cross called the "Casey Jones". This would be 1990s.

At least Plum & Spilt Milk is the right country!

manna wrote:G'day Gents

Thankfully, living 12,000miles away I don't have to see what's happened, to what was once a busy vibrant station/workplace.

manna

Heh, I'm 6,000 miles away myself. Don't make the same mistake as me, though, and go snooping around on Google Maps.

FINSBURY PARK 5 wrote:45 years ago it was oh so different!!.

Indeed! There was so much choice in the way of the "girls of the night" in those days.

J