Part 2:

The pub and toilets beneath are landside - the plans issued last week
suggest the toilets are accessible from the passage between Platforms
8&9 but that's not the case. That passage is blocked by some gates,
although some workers who came past while I was there managed to open
the gate with a well aimed kick.

There's a temporary roped-off passageway between the original concourse
to the new one. This bypasses the 'entry' gates to platforms 0-8 to the
south, and is quite insecure (all you would need to do is duck under a
rope).

The main escalators from the NTH to the concourse are hidden round the
back (by the outer wall) and I'm not surprised some people have failed
to find them from the concourse. Those escalators are extremely disjoint
from the ones up to the mezzanine.

All the toilets are 30p (beneath the pub and at the southern end of the
mezzanine), and I don't understand how the Prezzo bar complies with the
law in this respect. The pub has its own free toilets on both floors.

The pub claims to be the biggest on railway premises, and that may well
be true. It has numerous rooms on two floors. There are views of both
platforms 0-8 and 9-11 from the first floor (albeit to get near the
windows you have to get past tables and chairs arranged against the
wall), and views of the roof of platforms 9-11 from the second floor.
The part of the second floor which might overlook 0-8 is the kitchen.

Service in the pub is very slow, even with one bar person per customer.
They seem to have managed to provide tills that require a dozen
unfamiliar key-presses to log each drink, few of which can be served
without a trip to the other end of the bar. If someone pays by card that
adds another substantial delay. I didn't ask if they accepted "Paywave".

If the pub does off-sales (it's licenced to apparently) then it wasn't
clear they had anything other than bottled beer (which you'd have to ask
them not to open I suppose).

The bridge from the mezzanine to the main shed is not very obvious, and
I would only expect regular travellers to know it was there. When I used
the bridge the signs at the top of my trains platform 2/3 were blank, so
you'd better remember which platform it was you were heading for.

My train to Leeds was announced 12 minutes before departure.

The escalator down to platform 8 was roped off (broken already?) so I
went down in the lift (to nose around). To get back I waited until
someone came down in the lift, then took it on the way up.

When I arrived in the morning I noticed some stairs from platform 1 to
the bridge with a sign claiming there was no access to other platforms.
That's obviously false as if you went up the stairs you could then
descend into any of the others in the main shed.

As reported in another thread, the main departure board have a summary
of "all arrivals" and "all departures", but fail to say which is which.

The main concourse is helpfully large, and the retail is all around the
edge so it's quite clean. Spoilt by most of the escalators (up and down)
being hidden away. Standing in the middle of the concourse, it wasn't
clear how to get to the mezzanine, there should be an escalator right
there.

--
Roland Perry