The coffee table art book has been usurped, in one busy corner of London at least, by the art book coffee table.

Eurostar passengers at St Pancras station yesterday were able to explore the National Gallery’s permanent collection of masterpieces from the comfort of a sofa in the departure lounge. For the next three years state-of-the-art touchscreen devices sunk into six retro chrome coffee tables will enable travellers to surf 100 of the gallery’s finest paintings.

The results are projected on to 48-inch LCD screens mounted in sleek 9ft-tall glass panes in the Victorian brick archways of the hall. Eurostar is betting that its heavy investment in the Station Masters project will, at the very least, create an unusual diversion for travellers and may persuade some to return to London to see the works.

The National Gallery hopes that the spectacle will help to attract a new type of visitor to its collection. Nicholas Penny, the director of the gallery, said: “Sometimes when the National Gallery is really full people say: ‘It’s dreadful in here, it’s like a railway station’. This is going to change that. Now people in this station will say: ‘It’s really nice here, it’s like the National Gallery’.”

Although no reproduction can match a real Van Gogh, Turner or Caravaggio, Eurostar’s digital gallery has advantages of its own.

Information about each of the selected works can be accessed instantly and the touch screen enables users to zoom in on the paintings and scrutinise them close up.

“You might find yourself flying into a painting, discovering details which you never knew were there,” Dr Penny said.

He cited Jan Van Eyck’s 1434 picture of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, known as The Arnolfini Portrait. In close-up, it is possible to examine how the artist’s brushwork conveys the play of light on a chandelier or the radial lines in the iris of the merchant’s eyes.

The database of paintings also includes the Rokeby Venus by Velázquez and Whistlejacket by George Stubbs. They were chosen to embody eight broad themes, such as light, passion and time.

Christina and Richard Moore, on their way to Paris to celebrate Mr Moore’s 40th birthday, were among the first travellers to try out the new technology.

Mrs Moore said: “It’s a lovely way to pass the time while you wait for your train, especially as I’ve forgotten my book.”

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