"The Bristolian" was inaugurated in 1935 by the Great Western Railway (GWR) to celebrate the opening of the Great Western main line from Paddington to Bristol in 1835, and is notable in that the route taken differed in the up and down directions. The down train (from Paddington) took Brunel's original route via Bath, but the up train (from Bristol) climbed the 1 in 75 of Filton Bank through what is now Bristol Parkway and then continued climbing the 1 in 300 of the Badminton Line to Badminton before rejoining the down route at Wootton Bassett. This meant that the up train had a slightly shorter route of 117.6 miles (compared to 118.3 miles in the down direction via Bath), but with the stiff climb was probably the harder.