On Jul 9, 7:24*am, MIG wrote:

On 8 July, 23:24, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 06:31:45 -0700 (PDT), Andy
wrote:

The exit is to the north east, from the top of platforms 8 and 9,
where the bridge takes a bend between spans 3 and 4, the exit goes
straight on(ish). It comes out by the canal and ultimately leads to
Bishop's Bridge Road. It is one of the reasons that there has to be a
barrier on the bridge, if barriers are used, as the pathway is
currently rather narrow.

Ah, I looked and saw it today. *Must have disregarded it last time as
it looks like a bit of a building site entrance!

There is something circular about this. *Because of overcrowding,
there has to be an extra exit, but because of the extra exit, there
has to be a barrier that creates overcrowding.

(Or was there always an exit that way? *I can only remember going
through the main station, but maybe I never needed to go the other
way.)

The exit (the northern one for Harrow Rd) has been around since long
before the new gates were installed last year (or whenever it was) -
so afraid your argument falls at the first hurdle!

I can't quite recall exactly what the arrangement was in days or yore,
but I think this northern exit used to form part of the cab road that
ran through Paddington - I think there was direct access off the old
Bishop's Bridge into the cab road, which then used the ramp down to
the wide island between platforms 8 & 9 before continuing across what
is now the concourse and onto the ramp that leads up to Praed Street.

I'm not sure if there was any pedestrian access next to the cab road
in those days, as the cast iron bridge it uses (which now forms part
of that northern exit) is quite narrow - nor am I sure whether or not
there was any other pedestrian exit up this way.

There did used to be a direct entrance onto the H&C line platforms
from Bishop's Bridge too - I'm not sure when this fell out of use, it
may have even been before the H&C line tracks and BR tracks on the
approach to Paddington were disentangled in the 60's. The current
emergency exit bridge between the H&C island platform and platforms
13/14 is I believe a remnant of this.

I dunno whether there were ever any thoughts about connecting the new
Bishop's Bridge to a re-opened exit for the H&C line in the same
location, but if there were then they were obviously never progressed.