"It was cold and miserable. People used to run off the train on to a waiting bus or car. No one would hang around. There are more people just walking around now."
Rosaleen Walsh, who works in the florist's booth on Platform 2 of Heuston Station in Dublin is referring to the days when train travel involved the survival of the fittest. The days when the Heuston Station experience was a plastic cup of watery tea, herd-like queues milling around doubledecker buses heading for town - drabness on drabness - are now long gone.
Now, though it's not quite Grand Central, Gare du Nord or the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, the drab and the functional at Heuston has been replaced by the light, the airy, the modern. Instead of nipping in past the taxis on the John's Road side or approaching from the open end by the Liffey, the traveller now goes in through the long, closed-off main entrance as if entering a plush hotel. The look is glass and stainless steel, the feel cosmopolitan.
Passengers can now sip cappucinos under parasols in the indoor beer garden, browse for a book in an expanded Eason's, indulge in oysters in the Galway Hooker or grab a coffee and a Danish from the Kenco booth in the corner.
The station's new look was not modelled on any other European station, according to Iarnrod Eireann's chief architect, Mr John Clancy, but does include aspects that are reminiscent of Marco Polo station in Venice.
"It is a fusing of the old and the new. We welded the main front of the building and the train hall, which has opened up a vista of the city. This is rather like Venice, where passengers can walk off the train and see the gondolas. The redevelopment is very important in terms of Heuston Station's place in the city."
Station staff have generally welcomed the £5 million redevelopment, which began in 1996 and will not be completed until 2003. But travellers thronging Heuston this summer will be struck by a difference.
"It's a new departure, literally," says Nicholas Dillon, who's been a security guard at the station for 15 years. "The new appearance of the place should raise morale and make the passengers feel happier. It was money reasonably well spent."
Sandra Nolan, the manageress of the Galway Hooker Bar, feels the aim of the redevelopment was to make train travel pleasant. "The station was dismal. It didn't have many facilities. The idea was to create somewhere where a traveller can have some nice food and a beer and a bit of atmosphere," she says.
The bar, which has been now been open a few months, fits in with the overall look of the station, with its giant gilt mirrors and wall paintings by award-winning Cork artist Tom Clements.
The owner, David Wright, trawled Europe's finest stations for ideas before he opened the Galway Hooker Bar. "We found some fantastic bars and restaurants in train stations, especially in Germany. We decided to open a place that went against the norm of stations here - something that would suit the place. It is a beautiful old building with high ceilings, like an art gallery."
According to Sandra Nolan, many of the people who come in to the bar act differently because they are not on home territory.
"They're in transit, and often come in here bewildered after losing their train tickets or their money. Recently two American 16- year-olds came in who didn't have enough money for their fares. We kept them here and gave them chicken and chips until their father, who was waiting for them somewhere down the country, came to collect them. It turned out they spent the money on a Kinks CD," says Ms Nolan.
The aim of the refurbishment, according to the chief architect, Mr Clancy, was to maximise the "architectural assets" of the station which architectural historian Dr Maurice Craig once described "as a delightful building, a renaissance palazzo, gay and fullblooded, with fruity swags and little domed towers on the wings, a thoroughgoing formal composition, excellently articulated.
"Heuston is unique in that it is one of the oldest train halls in the world and it has never had any major renovations. Most mainline stations have had three to four. It was built using fairly advanced cast-iron technology."
The station was built in 1848 and began life as Kingsbridge Station. It was designed by architects Sancton Wood and Sir John Macneill. Lit by 140 gaslights, it was the showpiece of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. The name changed in 1966 to Heuston, after Sean Heuston, an employee at the station who lead a small group of 20 men to Usher's Island in 1916 to try to delay British troops due at Kingsbridge.
Heuston is also to have a an additional cafe, a pharmacy, a car rental service and a foreign exchange bureau.
Gregg Ryan, Iarnrod Eireann's Group Heritage Officer, said: "Phase two will increase the size of the concourse and there will be seven platforms. CIE financed the project with no EC funding or grant aid." To date, there are five platforms. The aim of the renovation, says Mr Ryan, is to take the beauty of the past and "harness it to the needs of the future.
"Heuston is the busiest railway terminus in the country. It had more arrivals and departures last year than ever, and that includes the heyday of the station. The features you see in the refurbishment are incorporated from best practice everywhere."