Paddington, Great Western Gateway: A Portrait of the Aristocrat of London's Railway Termini (Railway Heritage)

Silver Link Publishing Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 1997. Hard Cover. 4to 1857941020 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks.112 pages clean and tight. Drawing on archive photographs, and much original research, Tim Bryan offers a portrait of Paddington station, covering its development from the 1840s to the present day. In the 1928 edition of Holiday Haunts, the Great Western Railway boasted that Paddington was `one of the finest railway stations in London - the aristocrat amongst the railway termini of the metropolis'. Using 150 illustrations, many rare and previously unpublished, Tim Bryan, Curator of Swindon's Great Western Railway Museum, distils the essence of the GWR's largest and most famous station from the end of the last century to the present day. This latest volume in SLP's growing `Railway Heritage' series describes most of the major developments and events that have shaped the fortunes of the station. We visit not only the platforms and famous `Lawn', but also the offices and the Great Western Royal Hotel, the Goods Department and loco facilities, booking offices, waiting rooms and bookstalls. There are also glimpses of Royal visits to the station, war memorials, suburban services and, of course, staff and passengers. Paddington has undergone almost continuous improvement and development since its construction in 1854, from the expansion of the Edwardian era through the Blitz and nationalisation, from steam to diesel and electric traction, and now the fresh opportunities of privatisation as the `new' Great Western company and its partners take the station towards the Millennium. Yet much still remains of Brunel's original design, even as the overhead wires herald the new electric `Heathrow Express' services, the kind of new railway development of which the station's creator would surely have approved. As Paddington moves into the next century its title as the `aristocrat' of London's stations is certainly still deserved, founded on more than a century and a half of proud railway heritage. .