[joshvm]

Yes, I'm also curious what will happen there. The Express is still faster (20 vs 30 mins), but costs twice as much. And you have to get it from Paddington. It sits in a weird niche where the alternative rail routes weren't that much longer, but if you really had to get to the airport in a hurry (especially connecting from the West Country) it was a nice emergency option.

Now you also have the option of doing Reading > Hayes > Heathrow entirely on the Elizabeth Line.

My biggest gripe is that despite the high price, you spend the entire journey being force-fed live news on the TV and PR fluff about how it's the best rated line in the UK (no surprise, it goes between two stations).

[cannam]

Heathrow Express has long been a bit lost. The original idea was that you would check in for your flight - including baggage drop - at Paddington before taking the Express. When the "lawn" area at Paddington was opened in 1999, the back wall (now a row of shops, from Boots to Fat Face) was a row of check-in desks with baggage facilities.

I never used these and I kind of wish I had, because after 9/11 they closed and never reopened.

[edit: Wikipedia tells me the check-in service ran until 2003 and "was withdrawn due to low usage and high cost of operation", nothing to do with 9/11. My mind must have filled in the more dramatic memory]

Then a few years later the Heathrow Connect service opened, a slightly slower, much cheaper alternative to the Express (it changed names a few times but I believe is the same service as now constitutes the Elizabeth Line on that stretch) - so nobody who was coming from Paddington, planning ahead, and paying their own fare had much reason to take the Express any more.