Paddington Station built by Brunel and
opened is the terminus for
trains in and out to the west of London.
The station's interface manager Terry
Baker to see some other
parts of the station that you could
never normally get into, but before we do
that we obviously have to give a quick
mention to a famous character.


I've made a friend it's a next to
the statue here but here's the thing
that you should know in the film
Paddington the lost-and-found office is
shot here what will be the arts through
to Crossrail station. Basically, when the
film company realized
to film Paddington the movie, at
Paddington, the station this was one of
the first negotiations they did because
basically if you can't John Pennington
at Paddington Station there's almost no
point in making the film. So only when
they had the agreement from the station
that they could film here could they
then say right we can with the
rest of the film.

So the first proper thing we got to look
at orders known as the transept in the
roof so we've come halfway down the
platforms and high up onto this slightly
because you've got a
really good view of the transepts.

The transepts that cut across the three
arches at two separate points within the
station were originally included in the
design because Brunel intended to
install a hydraulic here that
allowed engines and carriages to be
turned around faster reducing the amount
of time spent between a train coming in
and going back out again but the money
was never provided to allow the
equipment to be installed and so they
never saw their full potential. Next
our first secret bit because Paddington is
at the western end of the post office
railway.

Platform 7 and platform 8 is
there, this is running my hard hat
because the Burger King
kiosk where you've probably bought a
greasy burger on a Friday night, you
didn't realize that this door here leads
down to mail rail.


And this door is unfortunately locked,
but here a step that take you
down to the mail rail at Paddington it's
still actually in use. I mean, they're not
running actual trains but they have to
check the integrity of the tunnels to
make sure that they're okay. About once a
month a man will maybe walking
maybe in a service train check
everything is okay here at Paddington
and then head back to Mount Pleasant
again.

This door, which
you may spot on the concourse, is another
way in to the defunct post office
railway system. We're now in the area of
Paddington Station known as the Long's
you may know this as retail and coffee
shop but did you know that the
early 2000s this was a check-in area if
you were getting a flight out to
Heathrow you could come here and check
in and check in your baggage too.
To allow the bag drop at Paddington Station
a tunnel just to convey
the baggage on to Heathrow trains was
installed but it now lies redundant and
disused.

The conveyor belt system was installed
so it had a top deck and a lower deck and
they would alternate the running of it
so that the motors didn't overheat, but
since the removal of the service we've
actually taken a lot of this
belt system away unfortunately because
of the size of it is had to be taken
away in small sections and walked off
the station.

There's part of me that
wants to just get on it and
but I won't obviously that would be
silly. In its operational days sliding
along the conveyor belt would have got
me in trouble with security.

it's one of the old motors, dusty which obviously
used to drive the conveyor belt system
we've just learned a great fact as well
is that because you've checked in your
bag and this is a customs area the only
people that in this area
were those that had customs clearance as
soon as your bag was in this area it had
passed through customs.

You can hear the
trains above the trains are literally a
few inches above our head and further on
down we find an old
which passengers used to be able to use
to connect between platforms

This concrete as you can see has plugged
a gap their stairs how they used to be
stairs up until the early 90s that take
you up to platforms 8 and 9- this whole
corridor that I'm in now used to be a
that you could go from one
side of the station to the other, and
basically when the Heathrow check-in
desk was built and that conveyor belt
was built, it kind of cut all through
this and this then became disused- but
look you can see old blue tiles this was
a public area, posters used to be here
and it's just sat here dusty, dormant and
disused, and it's brilliant.

so having successfully navigated
Paddington below, it was time to go to
the other place
that we come here for Paddington above.
Now there are four of
Paddington numbers one two three are
currently being refurbished but we
climbed up on to number four which was
refurbished a few years ago when the new
taxi rank on the northern side of the
station was built.

I'm always the first
to be an advocate of
London when you're traveling it's not
just grime and trains there's cool
things to see. And I've seen to make
myself the day, that I've never seen the
first time. I've been to Paddington
and I am
guilty of not looking up. This is an
original Art Deco building from the
original station with the letters G W R
Paddington you know big massive on the
side and I'm just wondering why have I
never seen that before?

We the other end passengers
small tiny creatures down below to check
out the view from there.

We're at the western end so over here you can see all
the gwr train lines down there
you've got the Hammersmith, the city and
Circle Line, and then over there you've
got the canal it's great!
Pretty cool view