I sat on the plastic chair at the plastic table in the tiny cordoned off café space at the Gourmet Coffee Bar and Kitchen on platform 5 and drank an excellent one-shot Americano from my cardboard cup with its plastic lid. I’d had one on a previous visit and so I knew just where to head to. Ahead of me and at height alongside the footbridge was a rather plasticky looking notice “Destination Crewe HS2”, in BR totem style. It was as flat, faded and worn as the aspiration that put it there in the first place.
Crewe was certainly my destination for a few hours yesterday, however, on a breezy, cool, though largely bright and sunny day. Above the entrance to the original station buffet on platform 6 is the inscription “The Crewe Hero”. Perhaps they mean me, after all I’ve been coming here every now and then for over 60 years. The illustration of a Coronation Class locomotive, a type that used to grace this same platform certainly took me back. Maybe it was one of the rarer Polmadie examples arriving at 3 in the afternoon on the Glasgow to Birmingham express. That was the closest I got to steam yesterday, though a few heritage diesels did put in an appearance. It still draws me back, this place, and the chances of a return before long and another very decent cup of coffee are now significantly higher than the arrival of HS2 - and may even precede the recycling of the plastic sign.
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