Malmaison Reading claims to be the oldest railway hotel in the world but the only surviving feature from the 1844 structure, built to serve Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway, is part of the façade. The interior was gutted by fire in the 1960s and building spent the next 40 years as an office block.

It reopened in July and a valiant effort has been made, through dozens of arty photos of steam trains in the public rooms and bedrooms, to restore the link with the station across the road.

The hotel’s website does it a grave injustice by claiming it is “merely an hour on the train from Paddington”. In fact it is only half an hour and there is a train every 10 minutes, making it an interesting and viable alternative to staying in an over-priced, overcrowded London hotel.

The black and white close-ups of nuts and bolts from steam engines blend rather well with Malmaison’s sultry, dark interior. Victorian gentlemen might have sat in the lounge in similarly plush velvet armchairs, but certainly not in one of the cluster of curving love seats in which the two occupants are divided only by a champagne cooler.

The hotel succeeds in striking a balance between being ultra-cool and comfortable. There are lots of clever gadgets but, unusually, you don’t have to fiddle with them for ages to find out how they work. The ferocious Dyson Airblade hand-dryer in the bar toilets really does do the job in four seconds.

We stayed in the Mallard suite in the basement, where a small Hornby train set has been installed to entertain those can’t find anything worth watching on one of the three large plasma screens in the sitting room, bedroom and bathroom.

Unfortunately, an engineering inspection was necessary before operations could commence. The temporary fat controller eventually worked out that the power unit had derailed. Once running, it chugged happily away in the background while we explored the delights of a wooden bath you could almost swim in and a four-poster bed broad enough for an Olympic gymnastics display.

The bathroom shelf was packed with enticing toiletries and any risk of feeling guilt about pocketing them was banished by a sign saying “take these, they are all yours”.

The intention throughout was clearly to encourage decadence, which might explain why there was nowhere to hang towels and they all ended up on the floor.

The suite’s other distractions had been carefully chosen to suit varying tastes, including a fully illustrated guide to the world’s best nudist beaches and an antique wooden jigsaw of the Coronation Scot steam locomotive (no missing pieces).

The one serious flaw, which would stop me ever going back until I was sure it was fixed, was the terribly creaky ceiling. We had the misfortune to be in the basement directly under reception and herds of elephants checked in all night.

The restaurant offered two menus – an extensive a la carte one with a strong French influence and a much narrower range of choices on a sheet entitled “Home grown and local”. There was an interesting paragraph on each of family-run farms and cottage industries which supplied the ingredients.

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