PADDINGTON STATION

Brunel left the mark of his engineering and classical architectural design genius everywhere on the G.W.R. In addition to his bridges and the tunnel portals, as at the Box Tunnel, there were his cathedral-like stations and workshops. The London terminus at Paddington was to be "a station after my own heart i.e. with engineering roofs...in a cutting with no exterior…entirely metal as to all the general forms". This he achieved with three long bays with great glazed semi-circular arched roofs carried on slim cast-iron pillars; for the wrought-iron he commissioned the architect Digby-Wyatt. Brunel, who had served on the Committee for the Crystal Palace, (see the essay on Buildings), used Paxton's Patent Glazing to construct this vast glass roof. The station was opened by the Prince Consort in 1854.

The enormous growth in the travelling public by the 1860s was the inspiration for the painting of a multitude of passengers pushing and struggling to board a train. This was Paddington (1862) (left), by William Frith (1819-1909). Though not a great painter he was extremely proficient in recording the minute details of scenes of middle-class Victorian life, which he did with accuracy and technical dexterity, a famous example being Derby Day. These were popular and sold well, while at the same time he was also accepted by his fellow artists, being elected to the Royal Academy in 1853.

In this detail, (right), from the large canvas spanning the whole length of the train and platform with hundreds of passengers, porters, and railmen we can admire the accuracy of Frith's rendering of the broad-gauge locomotive, gently steaming in readiness for departure, (one of the earliest instances of the use of the newly-invented photography as an artist's 'sketchpad' as it was based on Frith's contemporary photograph of the locomotive Sultan). We can see Brunel's slender iron roof-beams soaring over the platforms and the delicate tracery of the ironwork on the glass end-gable; the graceful glass spheres of the hanging lights are typical of the details with which Brunel embellished all his work.