With its route map pruned, leaders in the north want other options, while in the capital, questions are growing over its Euston terminus – still a giant hole in the ground
In the vision of HS2 published by the government a decade ago, a gleaming new station should now be taking shape at Euston, with the first high-speed trains to whisk passengers from London to Birmingham just a couple of years away.
Things have not, of course, quite panned out like that. The scars of the early works are evident in the area of central London surrounding the station: the vanished buildings, parks, trees, pubs and half of Drummond Street. Portholes on the hoardings that line the way to the remaining south Asian restaurants allow a view on to a mothballed site where a muddy Euston pond is forming.
