Situated on the south side of the River Thames, Reading Station is the main station in Berkshire and links to a host of locations including, Swindon, Wokingham, Didcot, and Oxford, to name just a few.
Reading Station has an annual footfall of nearly 20 million people, making it the ninth busiest station outside the capital. It’s estimated that around 3.8 million visitors use the station as an interchange each year, putting it just behind Birmingham New Street as the largest interchange in the UK. It has been ranked among the top five in the country.
The Queen officially opened the revamped Reading railway station which had undergone a £897m upgrade with five new platforms, two entrances, a new link bridge and retail outlets.
Reading is looking forward to December 2019, two Elizabeth line trains an hour and four an hour at peak times, will allow passengers to travel right through central London without having to change trains.
Reading Station History
It’s hard to imagine that when Reading station first opened in 1840 that is was a single-sided station that served as a temporary western terminus station on the main line Great Western Railway.
Reading Railway Station has grown and been redeveloped in a number of ways over the years to reflect both its growing number of visitors and its status in the region. As more and more trains started using the station, the single-sided station was replaced by conventional up, down and relief platforms linked to a pedestrian subway.
In the 1960s services were diverted from Reading Southern station to the newly constructed terminal platform 4a in the General Station. Another platform, 4b, was added to 4a in 1975 to serve longer trains operating between Reading and Gatwick Airport.
In the 1980s the station was made more spacious by the construction of a concourse with a shopping arcade on the western end of the old Reading Southern station, which was linked to the platforms via a footbridge. A multi-level car parking and a signal works building were constructed to the northern side of the station to cope with the number of people using the station.
Reading Station Taxi
A lot of our passengers go into the city for work or meetings. Some passengers are going into the country to relax and to spend a day shopping in London. Whatever your reason for travel, Yellow Cars will drop you off in time for your train and pick you up at the station. You can pre-book your Reading taxi in advance or call us on 01189 666 555 on the day.