Royal Oak Postcard

[euryalus]

I have an old postcard view from the Lens of Sutton Collection which purports to show Royal Oak station. However, the high-level station building depicted is not the present-day station building. I am wondering if the station was ever rebuilt or (perhaps more likely) was there once a separate station building for the long-demolished southern island platform?

 

[Taunton]

I don't know when the approaches to Paddington were widened out, I think some time in the 1920s, and the bowstring steel road bridges which pass over both ends of Royal Oak platform date, I believe, from that widening (you can find the same design all over the various GWR works done at that time). Were there originally entrances from the overbridges at both ends of the Royal Oak platform?

 

[euryalus]

I don't know when the approaches to Paddington were widened out, I think some time in the 1920s, and the bowstring steel road bridges which pass over both ends of Royal Oak platform date, I believe, from that widening (you can find the same design all over the various GWR works done at that time). Were there originally entrances from the overbridges at both ends of the Royal Oak platform?

That is my question - in fact I can see no other explanation, although a second booking office would still not explain why the architecture resembles that of the District Railwat, rather than the Metropolitan or GWR companies.