New Carriage Depot Facilities.

An ambitious improvement scheme to facilitate the formation of passenger trains is being carried out by the Great Western Railway at Old Oak Common, the locomotive and carriage

The Kursaal at Ostende, Belgium's popular Sea-side Resort.

depot for Paddington Station, London. This depot handles some 2,000 passenger carriages daily, empty stock from incoming trains from the West of England, South Wales and the north, there being re-formed to provide the outgoing trains from Paddington. At present there are 101\2 miles of sidings at Old Oak Common. To these facilities there are to be added another 31\2 miles of track.

There will be seven reception tracks, each of twenty car capacity. Separate in and out tracks to and from Paddington at both ends of the yard are being provided, and there will be twenty 1,000 ft. long storage tracks under cover, in addition to accommodation in the open. The covered carriage depot will, in fact, be as large as Paddington Station itself. New central-heated offices and mess-rooms are being built for the staff, which numbers nearly 600. An automatic telephone exchange, with connections at more than seventy selected points throughout the depot, will be another feature. Britain possesses many commodious carriage depots, but the new establishment at Old Oak Common, London, will be the largest facility of this kind in the country, covering an area of more than 100 acres.