Friday, July 15, 2011

London's Paddington Station


Although not London's grandest railway station - that status belongs to St Pancras (a post on it soon) - Paddington station is a major rail terminus and has been ever since the then twenty-something engineer, the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel was appointed to build the Great Western Railway as soon as its Act of Parliament received Royal Ascent in 1835.  The original station was after a few years replaced with a grander station, often called "Brunel's Greenhouse" which still stands next to the present day station.

This book provides a nicely illustrated history of the station, and some other structures, plus rolling stock, with historic photos and drawings throughout, including lots of colour and duotone.

One small gripe is that the body text has been set in a small 9.5 pt, but there is plenty of "artistic" white space left on these pages - why couldn't it have been filled using a larger type size?  We don't use font sizes less than 10.5 pt in our books, but British publishers particularly seem to have no compunction about using very small font sizes.  Anyway it is still a nicely composed book, 96 pages, softcover.

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