I read this fine passage from E M Forster today, on the train appropriately enough, and wished I’d spotted it in time to add it to my essay on train travel between Paddington and Slough. Somehow it is made even more poignant by the fact that Mark Speight apparently killed himself so close to Paddington station because it reminded him of trips to the West Country with his girlfriend.
Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo [...] And he is a chilly Londoner who does not endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear and love.
Howard’s End, Chapter 2.