No station I know is more exhilarating to approach than London's Paddington. From Hyde Park Corner, with its mighty Triumphal Arch, you speed up Park Lane amid the huge and noble plane trees of the Park, glimpsing the suave 1930s front of the Dorchester Hotel and the ingenious classical pavilions on top of Grosvenor House. After Marble Arch you glide through the elegant, stuccoed squares and terraces of Bayswater among the grandest and tallest Italianate houses in London.
Impressive Entrance
The station appears suddenly. You hardly have time to notice the huge cream façade of the Great Western Hotel before you plunge down the departure ramp beneath a long, broad canopy that wholly conceals the architecture of the station. But the best approach is the old one - you drive past the station, fork right over a massive battleship-grey girdered bridge that carries you over the tracks, and then turn back along a twisting ramp that carries you right down onto the platforms. Here is the grandest view of Paddington: As you approach, the roadway turns suddenly to reveal the full array of four great arched station roofs and the huge glazed screens that keep out the west wind.
Every yard of the tortuous route is engraved on my memory, as for ten years I came this way each term to catch the train back to school. Returning on a cold February morning, I found nothing had changed, not even the bold letters ordering one to "STOP! THEN PROCEED AT FOUR MILES AN HOUR," which delayed departure for a few treasured seconds.
At 10:30 in the morning Paddington was a marvelous, evocative sight. Eight high-speed trains, known as "125s" from the speed at which they can travel on a good stretch of line, were standing ready at the platforms, their diesel engines buzzing impatiently. I climbed the heavy iron footbridge that spans the mouth of the station, now painted eye-catchingly in grey and red. On my left the parcel platforms were busy with the bright red vans and trolleys of the Royal Mail. A steady line of shining black London taxis cruised down the ramps onto the platform to pick up arriving passengers. Within a few minutes, four of the 125s had slid out of the station and two others had come in. Convoys of little trolleys - some with four or five or six trucks - continuously wound along the platforms collecting and delivering parcels, and stocking the restaurant and buffet cars with food and drink.
The thrill of Paddington today is that it is busy. Throughout the day, its blackened roofs give it the evocative feel of a great terminus in the age of steam, and even the diesels obligingly belch a steady plume of smoke into the air. On a dark winter morning, the contrast of noble Victorian architecture and the fiercely modern trains was all the sharper. For the 125s have streamlined engines with snake-shaped heads, and, if they lack the variety of the old steam locomotives, they generate an immense sense of power and energy. And from the damp chill of the platforms, the brightly lit coaches, with their huge panoramic windows, seem intensely inviting. The departure board announces trains for Exeter, Penzance, Weston-super-Mare, Cardiff, Swansea - the westernmost parts of Britain. These are some of the fastest trains in Europe - the 112 miles to Bristol Parkway is covered nonstop in just over an hour.
Paddington station was the brainchild of
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