Probably the first railway experience I can specifically remember - and I think also the first time I saw any full-size locomotive of any kind - is being taken to WOS to see Gordon, and being distinctly disappointed by the experience. Basically because it wasn't bloody Gordon. It was the wrong colour and it didn't have a face and it had smoke deflectors (which were nasty ugly things and only the grumpy engine from the Other Railway ever had them) and all the bits and shape of it weren't like Gordon and it was basically just wrong. And on top of that there were so many people there that even sat on my dad's shoulders I could only see it from a bit above the boiler centreline upwards. The memory pretty much consists of (a) the top third of the wrong engine glimpsed above a massive sea of heads and upper backs, and (b) my feelings on finding out I'd been told something which wasn't true and was much more exciting than what actually was happening.
Not a promising start, one might think. But fortunately I'd well and truly got started long before, which has a lot to do with the disappointment in the first place
He has an Office on Paddington station and announcements used to come over the speakers asking someone or other to contact it. Eventually they got fed up with saying it so often and abbreviated it to "...contact the AMO", but it was still the same basically thoughtful message (ie. not asking people to contact him, just his office, so if he'd gone home for the night they could just turn up and go "hello office, hello doorknob, hello desk, hello light fittings" instead of getting stuck waiting around for up to sixteen hours waiting for him to come in again).
Paddington used to have a highly compacted underground toilet with an unfeasibly large number of urinals crammed into a horrid warm humid cellar that honked of disinfectant, and a hole in the corner with a barber in it. He cut my hair once. Poor bugger having to work down there all day. I wouldn't be surprised if he went mad in the end.
There was another hole hidden in the corner up in the main station on the other side. If you could remember where it was you could go straight to the Bakerloo line and avoid the crowds and hassle of trying to get in the normal way.
(Bakerloo: dvvv, dvvv, dvvdvv, dvvdvvdvvdvvdvvv, dvvdvvdvvvdvvdvvdvvdvvdvdvdvdvdvdv POP! (pause) ...dvv, dvv, dvvdvvdvvdvvdvvvvv...... . . . ...vvvvvvvvvvv-vvvv-vvv-vvv-vv-vv-vvv-vvvvv. (Stop.) Clunk. Clatterrattleclatterrattle. Errr... DGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDG... Clatt..er.rattleclatterrattle, thump. Dvvvv, dvvv, dvvv.... and so it goes on...)
The platform of Platform 1 used to be continuous for an amazingly long way out of the end of the station past parcels bays etc. IIRC they've broken it now but I used to wonder just how long a train you could theoretically have departing from it.
Far away is close at hand in messages from elsewhere.
Paddington could have this weird dual aspect to it as if it was two entirely different stations in the same place. At the Lawn end it was all crowds and bustle and men in suits, huge queues in the glass-and-rubber ticket office and glaring lights and people everywhere and a racket from all the locos at the stops and bursts of machine gun fire from the departure board, the full-on massive busy London station experience, all made of stone and concrete and iron and tarmac and other hard hostile commercial materials. But at the other end you had the footbridge coming in from the Metropolitan platforms which was often nearly deserted; it was old and soft and wooden and quiet and had a nice old wooden ticket office with short queues and windows that actually let you hear what the bloke inside was saying, and could almost be quite charming with a summer evening's sun slanting in through the windows. And it stayed like that if you went westward on that summer evening, out towards the country ends of the main platforms, out from under the main roof on towards the ends of the long fingers with their own canopies sticking way out away from the hustle and bustle. If you avoided noticing how many platforms and tracks there actually were you could almost imagine yourself to be on the platform ends of some distant and rural outpost of Great Westernry like Taunton perhaps, rather than in the London root of it.
There was a different kind of dual aspect in that journeys departing from it were invariably jubilatory, while journeys arriving at it were occasions of misery and gloom, so I can now think of it under the same physical aspects either with fondness or loathing depending on which way I imagine I'm going at the time.
Not a promising start, one might think. But fortunately I'd well and truly got started long before, which has a lot to do with the disappointment in the first place
What's an "Area Manager"?
He has an Office on Paddington station and announcements used to come over the speakers asking someone or other to contact it. Eventually they got fed up with saying it so often and abbreviated it to "...contact the AMO", but it was still the same basically thoughtful message (ie. not asking people to contact him, just his office, so if he'd gone home for the night they could just turn up and go "hello office, hello doorknob, hello desk, hello light fittings" instead of getting stuck waiting around for up to sixteen hours waiting for him to come in again).
Paddington used to have a highly compacted underground toilet with an unfeasibly large number of urinals crammed into a horrid warm humid cellar that honked of disinfectant, and a hole in the corner with a barber in it. He cut my hair once. Poor bugger having to work down there all day. I wouldn't be surprised if he went mad in the end.
There was another hole hidden in the corner up in the main station on the other side. If you could remember where it was you could go straight to the Bakerloo line and avoid the crowds and hassle of trying to get in the normal way.
(Bakerloo: dvvv, dvvv, dvvdvv, dvvdvvdvvdvvdvvv, dvvdvvdvvvdvvdvvdvvdvvdvdvdvdvdvdv POP! (pause) ...dvv, dvv, dvvdvvdvvdvvdvvvvv...... . . . ...vvvvvvvvvvv-vvvv-vvv-vvv-vv-vv-vvv-vvvvv. (Stop.) Clunk. Clatterrattleclatterrattle. Errr... DGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDGDG... Clatt..er.rattleclatterrattle, thump. Dvvvv, dvvv, dvvv.... and so it goes on...)
The platform of Platform 1 used to be continuous for an amazingly long way out of the end of the station past parcels bays etc. IIRC they've broken it now but I used to wonder just how long a train you could theoretically have departing from it.
Far away is close at hand in messages from elsewhere.
Paddington could have this weird dual aspect to it as if it was two entirely different stations in the same place. At the Lawn end it was all crowds and bustle and men in suits, huge queues in the glass-and-rubber ticket office and glaring lights and people everywhere and a racket from all the locos at the stops and bursts of machine gun fire from the departure board, the full-on massive busy London station experience, all made of stone and concrete and iron and tarmac and other hard hostile commercial materials. But at the other end you had the footbridge coming in from the Metropolitan platforms which was often nearly deserted; it was old and soft and wooden and quiet and had a nice old wooden ticket office with short queues and windows that actually let you hear what the bloke inside was saying, and could almost be quite charming with a summer evening's sun slanting in through the windows. And it stayed like that if you went westward on that summer evening, out towards the country ends of the main platforms, out from under the main roof on towards the ends of the long fingers with their own canopies sticking way out away from the hustle and bustle. If you avoided noticing how many platforms and tracks there actually were you could almost imagine yourself to be on the platform ends of some distant and rural outpost of Great Westernry like Taunton perhaps, rather than in the London root of it.
There was a different kind of dual aspect in that journeys departing from it were invariably jubilatory, while journeys arriving at it were occasions of misery and gloom, so I can now think of it under the same physical aspects either with fondness or loathing depending on which way I imagine I'm going at the time.