We're just on the Crossrail site just outside
Paddington station on the mainline from Paddington
to Bristol. It's the Great Western Railway,
probably Isambard Kingdom Brunel's greatest
achievement constructing the Great Western
Railway in the mid 19th Century. This site
is actually where in the 1850's he built a
new engineering yard with engines sheds and
locomotives workshops e.t.c. When the main
Paddington station was expanded this is where
they moved the engine workshops too. We've
got some brilliant preservation here of one
of the main engine sheds, turntable and several
other structures which is probably the only
surviving part of this site. It was demolished
in 1906 when all of the engineering workshops
were moved to Old Oak Common another Crossrail
site a few miles up the line. Well what we're
doing here is revealing the very kind of bottom
foundations of these great engine sheds, this
one we're in measured something like over 600 foot
long. We're recording these remains carefully
because essentially when the site was demolished
in 1906 no records were made. So we are going
to record these carefully with laser scan
technology and photography so we can re-construct
the yard as it was in the mid 1800's.
