4th June: London Paddington

The first station at Paddington was a temporary terminus for the GWR on the west side of Bishop's Bridge Road, opened on 4 June 1838. After the main station opened in 1854, this became the site of the goods depot. 10 facts about London Paddington Station:

1. It has 14 terminal platforms. Platforms 6 and 7 are dedicated to the Heathrow Express; long-distance trains usually use the south-western platforms, and local trains (including Heathrow Connect) the north-eastern ones.
2. About 35 million passengers pass through the station each year, going to and from such destinations as Reading, Didcot, Swindon, Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Taunton, Plymouth, Truro, Penzance, Cardiff, Swansea, Oxford, Windsor and Eton. And Nailsea and Backwell, famous for being the nearest station to my house.
3. If you don't live in London, South West England or South Wales you will probably still have heard of the station thanks to the author Michael Bond. He wrote a series of books about a bear of the same name. The bear is found at the station, having come from "deepest, darkest Peru" and with a note attached to his coat reading "please look after this bear, thank you". Bond got the idea after buying the last Teddy bear in a station shop on Christmas Eve. There is a statue of the character under the clock on platform 1.
4. Also on platform 1 is a World War I memorial depicting a soldier reading a letter, sculpted by Charles Sargeant Jagger. It was unveiled by Viscount Churchill on Armistice Day 1922. It is a memorial to the employees of the GWR who died during the First World War.
5. The station also features in an Agatha Christie novel, 4.50 From Paddington (1952) which opens with a murder witnessed by a passenger on a train from Paddington.
6. The area around the station has some serious crime connections. The Tyburn Gallows were less than a mile from where the station is now. In the 1700s were criminals were hanged there. “Paddington Fair Day” meant a public hanging and “To dance the Paddington frisk” meant “to be hanged”. Today, Paddington Green Station is where some of London’s most dangerous criminals are brought for questioning.
7. Staying with the gruesome for one more fact: in 1961, the decomposing body of a boy was found in a case at the station; the cause of death was paper stuffed in his mouth; but that's all anyone knows. His identity has never been discovered.
8. The station was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who hoped that people would catch the train from his station in London and then catch one of his ships from Bristol to America.
9. The train sounds in the song Rudy on Supertramp's 1974 album Crime of the Century were recorded at Paddington Station.
10. Time to kill while waiting for a train at Paddington and fancy a posh tipple? Searcys Champagne Bar serves 15 champagnes by the glass and over 105 by the bottle. They also do cocktails and food. They bill themselves as “a great place to start or end your journey”.