The board at ten o'clock
Kings Cross is a station of long goodbyes. Trains pull out from beneath Lewis Cubitt's twin arches for Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, and in the evening the departure board thins faster than most visitors realise. The last direct services north leave well before midnight, and on some routes and some nights nearer ten than eleven. Exact times shift with every timetable change and are published by the train operators and National Rail, which are the only sources worth trusting.
People miss them in two ways. Some are truly stranded: a meeting overran, a dinner went long, a Tube line stopped without warning. Others watch the clock slide past the departure with a certain calm, having decided somewhere around the main course that the morning train would do perfectly well. This entry is written for both.
If you have to be stranded anywhere, this is a handsome place for it. The semicircular western concourse, opened in 2012, spreads a white steel lattice from a single central column like the branches of a tree, and late at night, with the crowds gone, it is one of the finest rooms in the city in which to sit for ten minutes and decide what happens next. Even the queue to be photographed with the luggage trolley vanishing into the wall has gone home by then.
First, read the ticket
Before booking anything else, look at what you are holding. An Advance ticket is normally valid only on the train printed on it, so missing that train through your own lateness usually means buying another. Off-Peak and Anytime tickets are more forgiving, within the conditions that come with them. If the railway caused the problem, through a cancellation or a delay that broke your connection, staff will normally let you travel on the next available service, and compensation may be claimable afterwards.
The ticket office and the information point on the concourse can tell you which case you are in, and it takes five minutes. Settle it before anything else, because every later decision, the room, the length of the evening, the time the alarm goes off, depends on which train you will be catching in the morning.
A room, a few steps from the platform
Few London stations are better supplied with late rooms. N1C 4TB, Cubitt's curved building of 1854, stands against the western concourse of Kings Cross itself, so the walk from bed to platform is counted in seconds. Across Pancras Road the NW1 2AR fills the Gothic front of the neighbouring terminus, and on the Euston Road facing it, WC1H 8EG has made a hotel out of a 1970s council annexe, reached by a red lift running up the outside of the building that nobody forgets.
At ten at night, ring or message the hotel directly rather than going through a booking site; a front desk with an empty room is usually glad to sell it to somebody standing twenty metres away. The station shops will sell you a toothbrush. A clean shirt for the morning is harder, so ask whether the hotel can press the one you are wearing overnight.
From stranded to spoken for
Once the room is settled, the evening is suddenly your own, and the quarter behind the two stations is one of the best in London for spending it. Message the desk with three facts, hotel, hour and length, and nothing more is needed. A companion usually joins you in the hotel bar, or at a table north of the station, about an hour after the desk confirms, and the chat carries her exact time once she has left.
The natural route runs north. Walk up past the station to Granary Square, where the old goods yard lights its fountains after dark, and the restaurants in and around the old granary keep serving late. Dishoom, in a restored goods shed beside the square, is lively; the Lighterman, on the water's edge, is calmer. For the quiet end of the night the canal towpath runs east under low lamps, and the whole lie of the land is on the Kings Cross page.
Who says yes after the last train
Late requests by the stations tend to go to the women who say yes quickly. Stacy, at 176 cm one of the statuesque companions on the site, likes an evening better for having been decided on the same day, and carries a small camera for the lights on the canal. Michelle confirms quickly and is the right company for a guest who is a little rattled by the whole business of missing a train; she has a gift for settling a table within minutes. Tina, whose flat in WC2 is a short ride south, is usually the first name the desk tries once a message lands after ten.
The morning train, and the length that fits
The shape of the booking follows the first train you mean to catch. If it leaves early, ten hours at £1,800 from nine in the evening carries through to seven the next morning and ends with a short walk to the platform, breakfast taken at the hotel or on board. If you would rather sleep alone before an early start, two hours at £500 covers dinner and a drink, and £400 buys ninety minutes for one drink and some real talk in the hotel bar.
The overnight page sets out how the small hours and the breakfast that ends them are arranged, and the rates page lists every figure. A missed train stops being a problem the moment the evening has a second person in it.
Quick answers
It depends on the ticket type. Advance tickets are normally tied to one train, while Off-Peak and Anytime tickets are more flexible within their conditions. The information point at Kings Cross can tell you in a few minutes.
The desk never closes, so a request written once the last train has left is read at once. Most evenings she is at a hotel by the stations about an hour after confirmation, later if the Euston Road is still busy, with the time given in the chat.
N1C 4TB stands on the western concourse of the station itself, and NW1 2AR is just across Pancras Road. WC1H 8EG, on the Euston Road opposite, is a couple of minutes on foot.