A fantastic morning spent at the always busy station of Reading on the Great Western Mainline where we see plenty of services from Great Western Railway, Cross Country and Southwestern Railway along with a singular freight train from Freightliner.
The original station was completed and opened by the Great Western Railway in 1840 as is the theme with the majority of this section of the line and in that time has gone through some pretty major changes. The first station was built and designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and at the time was nothing more than a small single platform terminus station for his trains from London, 1 year later the line was extended to Bristol which meant that Reading then became a generic through station for passenger traffic. At the time it was taking trains roughly over 1 hour to cover the line to Reading, this was over a quarter of the time quicker than the fastest stage coach at that time. As travelling by horse was the only way to get around the country if you couldnt afford the then luxury of train. Because of the nature of the way that the station was first put together it meant that any trains running to Bristol would have to cross over the lines in front of the trains coming back down the line. This was perfectly fine because you hardly had any rail traffic back then. Of course if you try thag this day and age then you'll have a right mess on your hands. Less than 4 years after the station was opened the Great Western Hotel was officially opened and is believed to be the oldest surviving railway hotel in the world. Although oddly enough I've never seen it. Within a 10 year period the station would start to get more and more busy with the introduction of two new routes, these being the Newbury and Hungerford line and the line head in off to Basingstoke. The Newbury line was opened in 1847 and the Basingstoke line in 1848.
20 years later the station was given its first makeover with a new station building being constructed in 1865/67 which also brought a new tower complete with clock, if your trying to operate a successful railway enterprise then keeping to a somewhat strict schedule is paramount, so clocks would soon become a common feature throughout most stations in the UK.
By the time 1898 rolled around the old station was no longer fit for purpose because of the growing numbers in rail traffic and passenger usage. So it had to upgraded. The original platform was removed and instead replaced with a standard design that we would all recognise today with up and down platforms built as well as relief platforms. These were linked by a pedestrian subway as a footbridge wasn't installed at the time.
The station wasn't always known as Reading though, its name was changed to Reading General in 1949 to avoid confusing it with an ex-South Eastern Railway station that was relatively nearby. However British Rail dropped the General in 1973 so it once again became known as Reading.
During the mid 1960's to the mid 70's the station went under some work in order to take on additional trains. This was done by adding two new terminus platforms at the southern end of the station which would see traffic arriving and departing to Gatwick Airport. These trains used to run in and out of Reading Southern but were moved to the main central station.
The station once again saw redevelopment taking place when British Rail opened a new concourse inside the station boosting a brand new shopping arcade named after Brunel himself. Along with this an impressive footbridge was installed linking the old Reading Southern station to main complex. A brand new multi story car park was also constructed which took off near enough instantaneously with better access to the station than there had ever been. This did mean however that the old good yards and signal works were demolished and built upon.
Once that work had been completed Queen Elizabeth reopened the station officially on the 4th April 1989.
Everything that you now see today is a result of work taking place from 2009 to 2015 with the Reading flyover being installed, more platforms being built and better ease of traffic throughput as the station was deemed to be a bottleneck because of the amount of trains trying to access the station. Once again Queen Elizabeth The Second was brought in to reopen the station on the 17th July 2014.
Overall this is an amazing station to come to.
My next station is going to be Guildford.
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