A Station on the London Underground (aka tube), visited by the Bakerloo, Hammersmith & City, Circle and District lines.

Paddington station was designed by archtiect Isambard Kingdom Brunel, known to his friends as "Izzy". It is a monstrosity of Iron lacework and filthy glass. Izzy has a statue by one of the entrances. He's sitting down and he looks like his train is late. I think he should cheer up, he's got the only bloody seat in the station.

Paddington is also the destination of the Heathrow Express. Takes 15 minutes, goes every 15 minutes, costs 12 quid.

Supposedly Paddington Bear was found wandering around Paddington station with a label reading "please take care of this bear".
Paddington, 2021 NSW, Australia

In the top-three most exclusive inner-Eastern suburbs of Sydney, (alongside neighbouring old-money Woollahra and a stone's throw from the harbourside Double Bay), Paddington is 200 leafy streets lined on both sides with beautifully restored Federation style houses, mostly terraced.

Fronts the infamous Oxford Street with it's more-inner-and-grittier sister suburb, Darlinghurst (aka Darling it hurts), which is host to the city's annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

KEEP TAKING YOUR MEDICATION, OUR OLYMPIC VISITORS MUST SUSPECT NOTHING

The Hammersmith and; City line does not actually stop at the main railway station. This is why the pink line is not covered by the white circle on the London Underground map.

In order to get to the Hammersmith and City Line, you must leave Paddington Station and walk up the street for a few minutes. During Rush Hour you can follow a line of commuters, saving you the hassle of knowing where you are going.

The station, in particular the Circle and District line platform, has one of London Underground's biggest pigeon populations, despite LT peppering all available surfaces with pigeon sticks.

Research (sorry, I really can't recall where I read this) proves that pigeons use the underground to get around, and Paddington is a very popular station for them to commence their journey. Paddington is ideally situated to provide the birds with easy access to large parts of London, without the drawback of wing ache.

On a number of occasions on my journey to work (Paddington - Kensington High Street) I encountered pigeons using the tube.

On one particularly memorable occasion, a train pulled into the station,and as the doors opened I saw that a pigeon was patiently waiting to get off the train. It looked at me, and as I would any passenger, I allowed it time to alight, which it did, hopping off the train and flying straight up into the rafters, presumably to go to its little pigeon office.

Although paranoidfish says that the Hammersmith & City line is not actually connected to the station at Paddington, this is not correct. It's just at the opposite end of the platform to the Bakerloo & Circle lines. Instead of going towards the entrance of the station, go up the platform instead, up the stairs, and across the little bridge. You'll find yourself on the platform for the Hammersmith & City line, both Westbound & Eastbound trains.

It's worth noting that the Circle and District Line platforms are probably the oldest underground railway stations in the world, being built in 1863 with the Metropolitan Railway (the world's first subway).

The station is more or less in its original condition, with a traditional European station roof covering only about two thirds of the platform, the rest remaining open to the air, so as to allow smoke from the original steam locomotives to escape.


As for the main railway station, it has been seriously fixed up by Railtrack in the last several years, and is now extremely spartan and clean. There are no trash bins for obvious reasons, but there is a severe shortage of benches. At the rear of the station is a recent addition of a miniature shopping mall called The Lawn, containing a Sainsbury's Local, a Yo! Sushi, and various other miniature versions of popular high street shops. There is also a huge airline check-in desk for American Airlines and the Star Alliance, among others.

The station has also been electrified with catenary in recent years, mostly for the benefit of the Heathrow Express trains, although the wires outside the station also serve the North Pole depot for the Eurostar trains. Quite why the entire line to Bristol, South Wales and Cornwall was never electrified like the ECML and WCML remains a mystery.

The other companies serving Paddington are First Great Western, who run Class 43 High Speed diesel-electric trains to the West, and Thames Trains who run much smaller DMU trains to Reading and a few points past.

The station has 12 platforms. Numbers 9-12 are intended mostly for the commuter trains, or the Heathrow Express.

There is a statue of Mr Brunel next to Platform One at the exit from the taxi/drop-off area. There was also a Paddington Bear display many years ago, but this has since been greatly reduced to a life-sized stuffed bear next to the luggage storage shop on Platform Twelve, and a rather shoddy mural visible only from the east end of the Hammersmith and City platform.

Edit 15/12/04: Thames Trains have lost their franchise to First Great Western, who now call the services 'First Great Western link'. There is also a large bronze statue of Paddington Bear next to the escalators in The Lawn, and there's a pub upstairs that sell dodgy jacket potatoes (they didn't agree with the missus)

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