Time to come, time to go

Paddington station remains a wonderful testament to Victorian architecture and engineering. Built by one of England's greatest engineers of all time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it's soaring roof, broad span and cathedral-like proportions never cease to amaze, especially given the necessary innovation in the structural use of cast iron required in order for his vision to be realised. To quote from the man himself (and thanks to http://www.greatbuildings.com/ for this bit.)

"I am going to design... a Station after my own fancy; that is, with engineering roofs, etc. ... such a thing will be entirely metal as to all the general forms ... ; it almost of necessity becomes an Engineering Work, but, to be honest, even it if were not, it is a branch of architecture of which I am fond, and of course, believe myself fully competent for, but for detail of ornamentation I neither have time nor knowledge ..."

(Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in a letter to Matthew Digby Wyatt inviting collaboration on the design of Paddington Station, as quoted in Randall J. Van Vunckt, ed., International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture: Volume 1, Architects. Detroit: St. James Press, 1993.)

The - relatively - new Paddington Express from Heathrow to London goes into this station but I'll swear that 99% of travellers never even look up as they move from train to Tube. They miss so much; it's almost criminal in my book how little attention this gateway to London and London's past gets from those who use it. When it was built in the middle of the 19th century, this place epitomised all that London had been, was and would become. The power of Britain as the extant only world superpower at that time made manifest, all in a single monument.