Regardless of how early I arrive at Paddington, GWR announce the platform a maximum of 4 minutes before departure. So it's always a race - 300 people stampeding across the station, falling over other people's dogs & suitcases, & shoving each other through the ticket barriers.
Amen!!! Paddington is awful at this.
This is the policy that needs changing... why can't we be informed earlier and trusted to turn up to the platform at a sensible pace?
I've always assumed it's because they are so poor at time management that they never know in advance when their inbound trains are turning up, so can't commit to a platform. But I don't know that for sure.
Yes! I went from Paddington to Newport this week. We had ~ 3 mins to board a mile long train.