Mark W wrote:
wrote:

Guardian, Wednesday August 2 2006
Maev Kennedy
Building historians were exultant last night that plans to demolish the
fourth span of Paddington station - an Edwardian addition carefully
matched to Isambard Kingdom Brunel's original London terminus for his
Great Western Railway - have been abandoned by Network Rail.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/stor...835354,00.html

Matched ?

a) Different size. Stand on Bishops Bridge Road and admire the symetry
of the Brunel design, then weep at the oversized lump attached to it

b) different roof construction - where's the glass ?

c) different detailing (one of the glories of Paddington is the stars
and planets motifs in the roof arches - put there to hang cradling from
to clean the roof glass apparently - but of course no roof glass in the
Edwardian bit.). Even the west end glass wall is completely different.

d) and over half a century too late as well :O)

Flattening it and building a block of offices in sympathetic style and
matching scale to that on the southwest side would have far better
preserved the aesthetics (from the Bishops Bridge end - the only place
with a sensible view) of the historic station.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl...12832&t=k&om=1

Put it on satellite view (if it doesn't by default), and see what I
mean.

These were my thoughts precisely. See my separate post. We must have
been typing simultaneously!

Adrian.