Belles and Whistles by Andrew Martin

Author:Andrew Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books

9. Platform 1 at Paddington. The Cornish Riviera Express always left from there; the Night Riviera still does

Brunel wanted the station to be ‘an enormous conservatory in a cutting’. Why in a cutting? That seems uncharacteristically modest. It has been suggested that, having an inkling that the underground Metropolitan Railway was about to come to Paddington, he wanted to be close to its level. He also wanted to provide a flat grade for departing trains. As for conservatories, he ended up with a train shed made of three side by side, with soaring glass and iron roofs, and iron arabesques decorating the glass screens at the ends. A fourth arch would be added in 1916, because Paddington was deemed too small by then, as it still is.

These west–east arches would seem long and worm-like were they not twice intersected by north–south transepts. These correspond to, and are stared into by, vaguely Elizabethan arched bow windows and balconies placed high on the south wall of the station. The stationmaster used to occupy the office behind one of those arched windows, and it’s a good job he no longer does so, because his dignity would be undermined by the Ladbrokes and McDonalds that have been accommodated below. Today the stationmaster is located in Tournament House, an Art Deco block on the north-eastern corner of the station. It overlooks the ramp that used to correspond to the ‘departure’ side of the station. Another ramp, overlooked by another Art Deco block on the south-eastern corner, used to correspond to the arrival side. Now that most trains are reversible, stations no longer have arrival and departure sides, but the terminological distinction was still used at Paddington until the 1980s. Users of Paddington will know the departure ramp as the place where smokers are allowed to stand. The other ramp is, at the time of writing, closed off because Crossrail is coming to Paddington, and it will be fitted in along that south side, with no disruption to Brunel’s train shed.

Along the top of the block overlooking the smokers’ ramp is another testament to the obstinate persistence of the old company, in the words ‘GWR Paddington’. I have seen images – or perhaps dreamed – of those words blazing forth in the London night sky, and there are uplighters beneath them, concealed in concrete conch shells. The uplighters no longer work, but the interior of Paddington has an almost Christmassy glow at night, explained by the way the station lights illuminate the corrugated iron screens running halfway up the glass arches like venetian blinds. By day these look grubby and nondescript, but under electric light they become a warm, rusty red.

I particularly like Paddington on Friday nights, because of the band.

In the late 1990s, when I was writing a column about transport in London, I received a letter from a man who signed himself, ‘Reverend Gareth Edwards, The Vicar of Bayswater, and 1st Tuba BB Flat, Paddington Band’, which, he explained when I met him, was a contraction of ‘Great Western Railway Paddington Military Band’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.