Mind the closing doors!
A group of staff and young autistic adults enjoyed an amazing 'behind-the-scenes' tour of Paddington Station on Monday.
As part of our employment project, we have teamed up with the Elizabeth Line to give young adults the chance to gain some experience of what is required for a working life.. Our employment project has identified members of the autistic community in Barking & Dagenham and Havering who needed support to gain employment experience and as many of them are interested in public transport, it made sense to approach the Elizabeth Line to see if they would be willing to take some of our young people for work experience.
We hosted some Elizabeth Line staff a few weeks ago, and gave our members a chance to ask questions about some of the roles that are required to operate a busy transport network. And, as a result, we took a group to see for themselves how London's newest railway is run, so we visited Paddington to get a flavour of what life is like on a typical day.
We met at Romford and took the Elizabeth Line to Paddington where we had a tour of the station. Perhaps the highlight of the tour was our visit to the station control room, which monitors everything that happens at Paddington, 24 hours a day. Paddington is the third busiest station in London, behind Waterloo and Liverpool Street and it is open all day, every day, even at night, when important maintenance and cleaning takes place.
We also visited the gateline, to see how that operates as passengers are tapping in and out, and no visit to Paddington would be complete without seeing their most famous resident, Paddington Bear!
The Elizabeth Line opened in 2022 and transports 800,000 people every day, with 24 trains an hour going through the central section at peak times. Some of our group were invited to make live platform announcements, as the trains were pulling into and out of the station and before we made our way back to Romford, we were invited to look into the drivers cab on a stationary train.
Altogether, a brilliant day and thanks to Kat, Rhona, Rich, Lizzie and Joseph for putting it together. To get more details about our employment project, please drop a line to jan.hawkins@sycamoretrust.org.uk
