London Paddington station
London Paddington is a main line and tube station complex on Praed Street, Paddington, London, which has been the main terminus for the Great Western Railway and successors since 1838. The main line station opened in 1854 and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In the year ending March 2025, it was the third busiest station in Great Britain after London Liverpool Street and London Waterloo, with an estimated 69.9million entries and exits.
Paddington is the London terminus of the Great Western Main Line; passenger services are primarily operated by Great Western Railway, which provides commuter and regional passenger services to west London and the Thames Valley region, as well as long-distance intercity services to South West England and South Wales. The station is the eastern terminus for Heathrow Express. Elizabeth line services run through Paddington westwards to Reading, Heathrow Terminal 5, and Heathrow Terminal 4, and eastwards to Abbey Wood and Shenfield. Situated in London fare zone 1, it has two separate London Underground stations: one for the Bakerloo, Circle and District lines; the other for the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines. It is one of 11 London stations managed directly by Network Rail.
The station has been perennially popular for passengers and goods, particularly milk and parcels. Major upgrades took place in the 1870s, the 1910s and the 1960s, each trying to add additional platforms and space while trying to preserve the existing services and architecture as much as possible. Paddington was first served by London Underground trains in 1863, as the original western terminus of the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground railway. In the 20th century, suburban and commuter services appeared at Paddington as the urban sprawl of London moved westwards. Despite the numerous upgrades and rebuilding, plus damage sustained in particular during World War II, Brunel's original design is still recognisable.
Location
The station complex is bounded at the front by Praed Street and at the rear by Bishop's Bridge Road, which crosses the station throat on Bishop's Bridge. On the west side of the station is Eastbourne Terrace, while the east side is bounded by the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal. The station is in a shallow cutting, a fact obscured at the front by a hotel building, but which can be clearly seen from the other three sides. To the north of the station is the Westway, to the northeast is Edgware Road, and to the east and southeast is the London Inner Ring Road.The surrounding area is partly residential, and includes the major St Mary's Hospital, restaurants and hotels. Until recently there was little office accommodation in the area, and most commuters interchanged between National Rail and the London Underground to reach workplaces in the West End or the City. However, recent redevelopment of derelict railway and canal land, marketed as Paddington Waterside, has resulted in new office complexes nearby.
The station is in London fare zone 1. In addition to the Underground stations at Paddington, Lancaster Gate station on the Central line is a short walk away to the south. A little further to the south lie the conjoined parks of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.
The narrow busy section of the incoming main railway line between Ladbroke Grove and Paddington station is known as Paddington Throat among some engineers.
History
The National Rail station is officially named London Paddington, a name commonly used outside London but rarely by Londoners, who call it just Paddington, as on the London Underground map. This same practice applies to all the London mainline rail termini, except London Bridge. Parts of the station, including the main train shed, date from 1854, when it was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the London terminus for the Great Western Railway. It is one of eleven stations in London managed by Network Rail.Great Western Railway
After several false starts, Brunel announced the construction of a railway from Bristol to London on 30 July 1833. This became the GWR, and he intended it to be the best railway in the country. The GWR had originally planned to terminate London services at as this allowed them to use part of the London and Birmingham Railway's track into the station, which would have been cost effective. This received government approval in 1835, but was rejected as a long-term solution by Brunel as he was concerned it would also allow Liverpool to compete as a port with Bristol if the railway from Birmingham was extended.The first station was a temporary terminus for the GWR on the west side of Bishop's Bridge Road, opened on 4 June 1838. The first GWR service from London to Taplow, near Maidenhead, ran from Paddington in 1838. After the main station opened, this became the site of the goods depot. Brunel did not consider that anything less than a grand terminus dedicated to the GWR would be acceptable, and consequently this was approved in February 1853.
The main station between Bishop's Bridge Road and Praed Street was designed by Brunel, who was enthusiastic at the idea of being able to design a railway station himself, although much of the architectural detailing was by his associate Matthew Digby Wyatt. He took inspiration from Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace and the München Hauptbahnhof. The glazed roof is supported by wrought iron arches in three spans, respectively spanning, and. The roof is long, and the original roof spans had two transepts connecting the three spans.
It is commonly believed that these were provided by Brunel to accommodate traversers to carry coaches between the tracks within the station. However recent research, using early documents and photographs, does not seem to support this belief, and their actual purpose is unknown. The original station used four platforms, -wide and -wide departure platforms, a arrival platform, and a combined arrival platform and cab road. A series of nineteen turnplates were sited beyond the ends of the platforms for horse and coach traffic.
The first GWR service from the new station departed on 16 January 1854, though the roof had not been finished at this point and there were no arrivals. It was formally opened on 29 May, and the older temporary station was demolished the following year.
The Great Western Hotel was built on Praed Street in front of the station from 1851 to 1854 by architect Philip Charles Hardwick, son of Philip Hardwick in a classical and French-chateau design. It opened on 9 June 1854, and had 103 bedrooms and 15 sitting rooms. Each corner contained a tower containing two additional floors beyond the five storeys of the main block. It was originally run by a consortium of GWR shareholders and staff, before the company took over operations completely in 1896.
The clock on platform 1 was installed in 1903 and has three dials in diameter. The station was substantially enlarged in 1906–1915 and a fourth span of was added on the north side, parallel to the others. The new span was built in a similar style to the original three spans, but the detailing is different and it has no transepts. The area between the rear of the hotel and the concourse is called the Lawn. It was originally unroofed and occupied by sidings, but was later built up to form part of the station's first concourse.
Paddington's capacity was doubled to four tracks in the 1870s. The quadrupling was completed to on 30 October 1871, in June 1879 and in September 1884. An additional platform opened in June 1878, while two new departure platforms were added in 1885. One of the lines between what is now platform 5 and 7 was removed, in order that the latter could be moved to a more southerly position. Aside from the June 1878 work, Brunel's original roof structure remained untouched throughout the improvements.
The GWR began experimenting with the electric lighting in 1880, leading to Paddington being decorated with Christmas lights that year. Although the system was unreliable, it spurred the GWR on to a more ambitious lighting scheme in 1886, in which a 145V AC supply could light the terminus, office, goods yard and Royal Oak and Westbourne Park stations. It was praised for its scale and showing that electricity could compete with gas lighting on the same scale.
Paddington became an important milk depot towards the end of the 19th century. A milk dock was built in 1881, and by the 20th century over 3,000 churns were being handled at the station every day. Other goods such as meat, fish, horses and flowers were also transported through Paddington. Passenger traffic continued to improve as well. In March 1906, the goods depot at Westbourne Park was moved to Old Oak Common. The main departure platform was extended in 1908 and used for milk and parcels.
In 1911, work began to separate light and empty carriage traffic from running trains between Paddington to Old Oak Common, which involved the rebuilding of Westbourne Park station. The work was halted because of World War I but resumed in 1926, to be completed the following year. Three new platforms were added; platform 12 in November 1913, platform 11 in December 1915, and platform 10 the following year. The roof was completely reconstructed between 1922 and 1924, replacing Brunel's original cast-iron columns with steel replicas.
Unlike several other London termini, Paddington saw no damage during World War I. Although Victoria and were the main stations for military movement during the war, Paddington was used for some of this traffic.
On Armistice Day 1922, a memorial to the employees of the GWR who died during the war was unveiled by Viscount Churchill. The bronze memorial, depicting a soldier reading a letter, was sculpted by Charles Sargeant Jagger and stands on platform 1.
Big Four and British Rail
The GWR was the only railway company that continued through the Big Four grouping in 1923. A tube railway for the Post Office, opened in December 1927, could cater for around 10,000 mailbags every day.Paddington was extended again from 1930 to 1934. Platforms 2 to 11 were extended past the Bishop's Road bridge and a new parcel depot was built. Suburban services, which had never been considered important at Paddington, were increased as new housing estates in the Home Counties started being built. Bishop's Road station was rebuilt, giving an extra four platforms to Paddington and providing a new ticket office and entrance for suburban services next to the bridge. A public address system was introduced in 1936. By this time, around 22,000 parcels a day were being forwarded from Paddington, with the Royal Mail service processing around 4,500 mailbags and 2,400 parcel bags every day.
The station came under attack several times during World War II. On 17 April 1941, the departure side of the station was hit by a parachute mine, while on 22 March 1944, the roof between platforms 6 and 7 was destroyed by two bombs. Passenger traffic greatly increased through Paddington during the war, partly by evacuation to the relatively quiet Thames Valley, and because holidaymakers chose to travel west as large areas of the south and east coasts had been taken over for military purposes. On 29 July 1944, the station was closed for three hours because the platforms were saturated with passenger traffic, while on the subsequent August bank holiday, crowds were controlled in tight queues along Eastbourne Terrace by mounted police.
Steam traffic began to be replaced in the late 1950s. Between 1959 and 1961, suburban services switched to diesel multiple units, while the last regular long-distance steam train left Paddington on 11 June 1965. The track layout was reorganised in 1967, abolishing the distinction between arrival and departure platforms that had been a feature of Paddington since opening. A new set of sidings was built south of Royal Oak, and the track curve into Paddington was eased. Services to the Midlands were rerouted via during this time.
The station concourse was enlarged in 1970, and the ticket office was rebuilt in the same year. By this time, public opinion had turned against wholesale demolition and redevelopment of stations such as Euston, and consequently the rebuilding work was done with an eye towards preserving Brunel and Wyatt's original station design. Special steam services began to be run from Paddington again in the 1980s.
In 1982, a bronze statue of Brunel was erected on the station concourse. It was sculpted by John Doubleday and funded by the Bristol and West Building Society. Between 1989 and 1999, the Lawn was re-roofed and separated from the concourse by a glass screen wall. It is surrounded by shops and cafes on several levels.