#Paddington Station | Tracking the Light

Last Saturday, Kris and I traveled from London Paddington to Oxford on aboard Great Western Railway Class 800 Hitachi-built dua-mode passenger train.

The 800 Class train is multiple section railcar powered by both overhead electric and on-board diesel engines. On our trip, it worked off overhead catenary between London and roughly Didcot Parkway, where it switched to diesel power for the remainder of the run to Oxford.

The seating is largely airline style, but with some seats arranged in quads facing each other across a hard table, and train is slightly more roomy than most commercial planes and features large windows. The ride quality was very good. Top speed on the run was 125mph.

We bought our tickets just a few minutes before departure and boarded the train as soon as the platform was announced. This proved to be a wise move because on deptured the train proved to be very well patronized with almost all the seats in our car occupied.

I’ve enjoyed the run over I.K. Brunel’s famed Great Western route on many occasions, but this was my first traveling on a Class 800.

I made these photos using my Nikon Z7-II.

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A week ago, Kris and I traveled from Dublin to London on British Airways. From Heathrow Terminal 5, we traveled on the Heathrow Express to Paddington.

There are a variety of rail options from Heathrow. We chose Heathrow Express largely because of convenience. Between us we had three checked bags and two carry on and the prospect of navigating the tube with so much luggage made the tube/Elizabeth Line options unappealing.

Upon arrival at Paddington we made a few photos then took a taxi to our hotel.

One minor difficulty was a signalling fault on the Great Western Railway route that resulted in a minor delay to our train, and subsequently caused the cancellation of some subsequent Heathrow Express trains. We were lucky that we arrived when we did!

Photos exposed using a Panasonic Lumix LX7.