‘Uncomfortable, unpleasant, unsafe’: How London’s Euston Station became hell on earth

If hell exists, then surely it resembles the concourse at Euston station. You stand, neck craned towards the departures board, squinting under artificial lights that seem perfectly calibrated to induce migraines. You dodge passengers who stampede like wildebeests towards platforms announced moments before trains are due to leave. Venture outside for air, and it’s grey as far as the eye can see: the concrete rectangle of the station, the equally drab units housing Pret and Nando’s on the forecourt, the faces of the people freshly traumatised by their Euston experience. It is an ugly, smelly, joy-sapping experience. “Absolute chaos – never again,” one recent Tripadvisor review sighs. “Depressing and disgusting,” another snappily sums it up.

And then there are the delays, the cancellations, the throngs of pissed-off travellers packing the main hall. Barely a week seems to go by without reports of some fresh form of carnage breaking out at the station, accompanied by videos showing vast crowds jammed shoulder to shoulder, Euston’s seasonal nadir, one memorable tweet described it as “a Petri dish of chaos”). It’s enough to send any regular travellers into fight-or-flight mode. I’ve had the misfortune to journey to and from Euston on the West Coast Main Line – which runs to cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow – for about a decade. It’s never been an especially enjoyable experience. I used to put on my running shoes before attempting to travel on a Friday night, kidding myself that it might give me the edge in the infamous “Euston dash”. But in recent years, it has sharply deteriorated.