Great Western Coffee Shop

I've changed the images on the top right corner of the page ... there are 10 different illustrations that are used randomly.  Most but not all are firmly in FGW territory. How many places can you identify, and can you spot the odd one(s) out?

One is of an HST at Swindon

This one?

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw91.jpg)

My note / thought was that it was Kemble, but I'm probably wrong; certainly taken when I used a 125 to make the journey between these two stations.

To make it a bit easier to work out where these pictures are, here are three more you'll see (and they won't change within this thread!)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw90.jpg)


(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw94.jpg)


(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw98.jpg)

Bottom one is paddington, is it not? and the inside of a carriage is a 143, yes? (couldn't tell you where or which, however :p)

Right on both of those two, Steve.  (The 143 picture was on the 09:02 Saturdays only from Westbury to Swindon, but there's no way you could tell that from the picture and on this occasion it was a little busier than normal!)

The middle picture of the three above isn't going to be easy ... and let me pull up a couple more

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw99.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw92.jpg)

Is the top one (on the second set) the old Marizon station?

Is the middle one (on the first set) B'ham New Street?

If you mean Marazion, in Cornwall, Btline, I don't think so: see http://www.urban75.org/railway/marazion.html  :-X

You've chosen the two tough ones there, Btline ... although you have the right coast (i.e. the South Coast) for the first one.  I hate to admit this, though, ... the wrong continent for the second one!

:'( :-[ ??? :-X :( >:(

Don't worry, Btline - while I can work out what it's not, I also haven't a clue what it is!

On my past form, even when I've practically helped grahame set up the shot, I still can't identify the station, when he posts a picture on the forum! See http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3663.msg28403#msg28403  :-[ :P ::)

However: I'm sure the picture with the yellow screens top left, and a row of people sitting in the foreground watching them, is also PAD - the last time I bumped into Ollie at PAD, we chatted there, just outside the main FGW ticket office!  ;) :D ;D

Yes - this:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw96.jpg)

is Paddington.

And that leaves six still to be identified

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw93.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw95.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fgw97.jpg)

I'm going to give you the one that's a continent away - It's New York's Penn Central station, showing that the gathering of passengers below the departure screen isn't purely a Paddington phenomena.  So the other two are the external shot of the 143 (where was that?), and the crumbling remains of xxxx station, which could be an FGW terminus if the line was reinstated to there, but would more likely be another operator. It's even more likely that the trackbed will be turned into a road busway.

With these questions, you tend to know them, or you don't.  You'll see me very quiet on may of the threads of other people's pictures as I don't know them either.

Gosport? (the one in ruins)

Yes - that's right.

And old and new comparison at:
http://www.wellho.net/mouth/1732_Old-pictures-and-comparisons.html

More pictures at:
http://www.wellho.net/share/gosportstation.html

Paddington Plt 1

On a HST coach F

Top one of the three is Weymouth.

The coach F is more specifically LA79, the ex MML set that was running around on the system for a while, now refurbished for Cross Country.

A very old picture maybe? That looks like a Thames Train in platform 1!  :)

Not as old as you might think, Jo ... the summer before last.  And, yes, the identity of the Midland Main line set is correct too ... and Weymouth.   Just leaves the picture of the 143 at some station or other to be identified, and I thought that would be one of the first to be placed!

My hopeless eyesight suggests that it is Kemble  :D

It is indeed ... and I suspect your eyesight was helped by some image sharpening software and a bit of pixel zooming ;)

Congratulations, all ... all 10 identified. Perhaps I should ask devon_metro if I can add some of his images to correct the Wessex (truely Wessex area, not the old train co.) bias.

I can see no problem in that, and as it happens, I find looking at the picture of Kemble further away helped more than zooming in. No cheating, honest  :)

Fair play to devon_metro - I did the same, squinting at the screen from a distance, and I was perhaps 90% sure it was Kemble!

A topical tip - there must be some scientific explanation for it, but if you squint at any of those news items with the faces fuzzed out, you can often work out who it is!  ::)

Funnily enough Grahame, I was thinking of New York Grand Central Terminal......

Grand Central is mostly (if not exclusively) shorter distance commuter traffic: all the long distance Amtrak services use Pennsylvania ("Penn") Station which is a rabbit warren very much in the same mould as New Street, buried beneath Madison Square garden (which to my untutored eye doesn't look much like a garden!). If it's any consolation I made two trips through Penn station a few months ago and didn't recognize it!

Penn used to be a much grander building but was comprehensively butchered in the 1950s and 1960s (again, note the parallels with New Street), prompting Vincent Scully (it says here he was an architectural historian) to comment "one entered the city like a god...now one scuttles in like a rat". It is supposed to be replaced before very much longer with a new (and much grander-looking) station, to be named Moynihan station, in the old post office building just across 8th Avenue.

"one entered the city like a god...now one scuttles in like a rat"

This could be applied to the new St Pancras Thameslink.

What a cramped, dark, dingy, New Streetish station (unlike the spacious, light, and attractive King Cross Thameslink station).

I expect that all the Crossrail stations will be New Street clones. ::)

The think that has struck me about Penn Central when I've used it is just how narrow the platforms are compared to the UK ones - it seems there's a tiny space between this huge train as it rumbles in, and the pillars holding up whatever is above.   It could just be an optical illusion caused by the size of the train; usually I'm fine but I feel odd at Penn Central - like I used to an the old Angel tube, but that's another story.

I've not been to St P Thameslink, but I'm surprised at this comparison. In peak hours you couldn't even get on to the platform at KX Thameslink, to admire the er, spacious, light and attractive station, with passengers 5 deep awaiting their train home, and the next three too.

Well put it like this. In a magazine there were pictures of before and after.

After reading the article, I assumed that the Kings Cross picture was the new station.

I got a bit of a shock when I read the captions!

Well St P TL is in a subterranean box, whereas KX Thameslink was in the daylight.  Which maybe why you got that impression.  But I haven't heard any feedback from regular passengers wishing they were still using KX, so I think the space outweighs the lack of daylight.

As an aside, given in due course there will be trains coming down from the Great Northen lines, I did think it would have been better to have had 4 platforms at St Pancras T, to enable trains to be held awaiting arrival/departure from places as far afield as Brighton, Peterborough and Kings Lynn. But I suppose we were lucky that the govt agreed to fit the box out at all, as for a time it looked as though there was going to be a nice big box (built at huge inconvenience to the travelling public) but no station.     

Just to add on that is a Thames Trains livery but has First Group splattered all over it, it was a little bit before they put the dynamic lines livery on.

Amtrak never seem to allow pax onto the platforms at Penn (or any other big American station for that matter) before the train has arrived, but you're right it does seem very very cramped at track level. I'm impressed that you managed to get a picture of Penn's passenger concourse without arousing the suspicion of the Amtrak police who if I'm remembering correctly have a booth right behind where you must have been standing to take the picture!

http://paulbigland.fotopic.net/c1422243.html

Looks nice to me. Bear in mind much of London's transport system is beneath the streets anyway!

Sorry, we can't be looking at the same images. :D

On that link, I see a dark, dingy, claustrophobic station.

The St Pancras International upstairs is worse though - they have destroyed a once great station by adding a concrete box on one side and an oversized Greenhouse on the other.

Whatever happened to designing extensions to fit in with the general aesthetics?

"Images of the new Tottenham Court Road Station have been released as work on the Crossrail project is due to begin. The central London Tube station is being redeveloped and a new Crossrail station is being built."

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7821927.stm