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Old 29th July 2007, 12:00
CAVREADINGRAIL CAVREADINGRAIL is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Lower Morden
Posts: 2
Smile Reading Station Upgrade

It was this title in Google which led me to joining Railway forum. If we are not to repeat our mistakes in the future then we must learn from our mistakes in the past. The history of Reading station is littered with mistakes,
  • The first Reading station built by the GWR comprised of two separate platforms both on the south side of the down main line, one serving down trains and one serving up trains. Up trains had to cross the down line to call. Reading station was re-organised into something like it 's present layout in the late 19th century
  • The second Reading station built by the LSWR was to the east of Vastern road approximately opposite Reading gaol. Later on a new station known as Reading South was opened in Station square when the line was extended across a via duct over Vastern road
  • In the late 19th century the up line just north of Reading General was connected via an incline, a low level line in King's meadow and a burrowing junction east of Vastern road under the GWR embankment to the LSWR but any connection with the Berks and Hants line and therefore to Basingstoke was frustrated by the GWR by having a prohibition clause inserted in the parliamentary bill.
  • A connection was made from the LSWR to the GWR down line in the early 20th century east of Vastern.
  • Yet another similar connection was made further west but still east of Vastern Road in the 1940's
  • 1965 saw the demolition of Reading Southern (changed from Reading South in the early 1960's and a single platform built to accept electrics to Waterloo using the above connection
  • The 1970's saw the above platform doubled
  • The 1990's saw the closure of Reading West and the reversal of all North (Midlands) South (Southampton) passenger trains stopping at Reading in west bays of Reading General
  • The 1990's also saw the construction of the new ticketing hall (on the site of the earlier demolished Reading Southern station with an overbridge to platform 4 but no investment in track or platforms
It must surely be time to take a radical view of this location where north south, east and west meet and stop tinkering about. My suggestion is to relocate the entire station complex further west and at the same elevation as the present western main line taking advantage of the triangle where Reading shed 81D used to be and derelict land around it. The main terminal building would be approximately where Tudor road and the old abattoirs used to be allowing north/south platforms in the triangle to be connected with east west platforms. A burrowing junction would connect the up main, east of Reading, with the down main of the Berks and Hants and a low level platform would serve passengers from the north changing at Reading. Similarly a burrowing junction would connect up trains on the Berks and Hants with the up main going east with same low level platform enabling passengers to change trains. The existing station area could be used for east bound commuter traffic either to Waterloo or to Paddington. In fact Waterloo could run loop trains via Basingstoke as envisaged by our Victorian forefathers.

It seems to me that all the ingredients are in place. The necessary difference in height courtesy of Brunel, brown field sites and the general need for development in and around this area, the triangle already in the hands of Network rail, the need for an efficient alternative route to Birmingham, preferably via Oxford etc.

No more tinkering it's time to think on a bigger scale, after all Reading is the second busiest station after Paddington on the western, why not make it number one.
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