Video: First glimpse of the new virtually-complete Grand Central Station – Belfast’s replacement for Great Victoria Street

The massive construction project has years in the making, and the News Letter last visited it in November while it was still basically a building site.

Now the final touches are being put on it ahead of its first day of operations at 5am on Sunday.

However, it will only be catering to bus passengers for the time being.

The rail platforms will remain empty until rail safety inspectors give the newly-laid tracks the all-clear.

The boss of Translink, Chris Conway, told the News Letter he expects this will be “before Christmas”, but would not be drawn on a more specific date.

The station is a replacement for the old Great Victoria Street train station / Europa Bus Centre.

Buses are still operating from there for now, but will migrate over to the new station on Sunday.

Train services from Great Victoria Street stopped in May.

Instead Belfast passengers wanting to travel on the Larne or Bangor lines have been going from Lanyon Place, and bus substitution services have been running between Belfast and Lisburn whilst engineers rejigged the city’s railway network.

This situation will continue whilst Grand Central’s new tracks await clearance from the inspectors.

As for the aesthetics of the building, its interior more resembles an airport than a bus or train station.

It was designed by John McAslan + Partners, the architects behind the colossal revamp of London’s King’s Cross Station in 2012.

It has a massive main concourse and is split over two floors.

The second floor will be an area to wait and socialise and the plan is to open a pub there run by the Scottish craft beer company Brewdog (though there is no opening date yet).

On one side of the concourse will be the trains, and on the other are the stands for the buses.

The old Great Victoria Street had four platforms; Grand Central Station has eight.

And whilst the Europa Bus Centre had 17 bus stands, Grand Central Station has 26.

There are two gigantic screens displaying bus and train times in the new station, and there are plans to open a Marks and Spencer food shop and a Pret-a-Manger cafe.

Again, there are no opening dates yet, but the Pret-a-Manger appears close to completion.

Is Mr Conway nervous about the public opening on Sunday?

"I'm always nervous when we get to key milestones like this,” he said.

"But I'm also very confident we've got a very good team in Translink, and I'm very proud of the work the team have done to get us to this stage.

"This is the biggest infrastructure project on the island of Ireland.

"As well as the station which people can see you've also got six kilometres of railtrack which is being relaid behind us – switches and crossings, a new digital signalling system that's being started as well, all of our contactless ticketing going in.

"So it's a big undertaking.”

What has been the biggest headache?

"I don't think there's been one – there's been several,” he said.

"Obviously in the early days it's going through the planning process, the business case, getting the procurement done, and then of course there's getting ino the construction phases. Each of them are a series of challenges.”

Can he say when the trains will start running?

"Safety is our number one priority. The bus operation will start this weekend, and we're working very closely with the safety authority on the timing for the railway to open. We hope to announce that date soon.”

Will it be before Christmas?

“It'll be before Christmas,” he confirmed.

A lot before Christmas...?

"That's as much as I'm prepared to say!" he replied.

According to Translink, the new station is about three minutes further away from the city centre on foot than the old Great Victoria Street station / Europa Bus Centre was.

It will have entrances on the Grosvenor Road, and another at Glengall Street (which will be known as the Saltwater Lane entrance, once Translink finishes building a plaza there know as Saltwater Square).