Hello and welcome to the final independent travel podcast of the week with me Simon Corder

and I'm here at Kings Cross Station in central London because it's the departure point or more particularly the arrival point for tens of thousands of

travellers every hour really coming in from stations to the north of London but

also of course on the East Coast mainline from Yorkshire from the North East

East from Scotland to London and there's some interesting things going on here

first of all everything is fairly calm and organised there's a queuing system which is a

little bit different in order to keep numbers manageable train services are going

pretty much on schedule and looking at a few arriving

trains. There's not too many people on them. What's a really unusual feature though and it's happening here

at Kings Cross and also just across the road from me at London St. Pancras International

is that there is an overnight waiting area on a train. Yes, they are parking at Platform 8 here at

Kings Cross a train overnight. The idea is that if for example you have

been queuing to pay your respects to the Queen then you are perhaps finishing at two o'clock in

the morning and where are you going to go? Your first train isn't going to be till six or seven in the

morning and so therefore you can go on

and anybody can do this go to kings cross and go to platform eight and sit on board the train

if you're nearest the ticket barriers you'll even be in first class and they have the lose

working and everything in addition same thing across the road at London,

St. Pancras International, which is, I think, a really good indication of how the railway industry

is working absolutely flat out in difficult and unprecedented times to deliver a good service.

Now while things are running relatively smoothly here,

there are concerns about whether the system will cope.

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