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Sensations

63. The views from West Harrow

13 November 2012
Metropolitan line, Numbers 51-75, Sensations, Zone 5
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Harrow right through meSlip away from London as dusk nears and head westwards towards Metro-land. Ride the train towards Uxbridge and you’ll see how once more the Underground offers some of its most tranquil sensations when it has shaken free of its titular lair. The line rises high above street level, poking its nose over rooftops and chimneys and the tallest of trees. Step off at West Harrow and you’ll find views worth lingering on the platform for.

Westward? Oh!The station building itself can’t really hold a candle to these provincial panoramas. It selflessly defers to its surroundings, helpfully distracting you from its less than notable design – only to try and redeem itself by co-opting the sunset into a kind of backcloth against which to display its tiny wares, like a thimble salesman setting up pitch in front of Westminster Abbey.

Look behind youI suppose there are worse examples of less used and even lesser loved out-of-town stations. But there aren’t many better examples of ones that make up for their deficiencies on the ground with such breathtaking sideshows in the sky.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

44. The platforms at Ickenham

23 August 2012
Metropolitan line, Numbers 26-50, Piccadilly line, Sensations, Zone 6
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Country-spiedMetro-land is not quite a thing of the past.

That vast sales pitch-cum-sunlit upland of the early 20th century hasn’t completely disappeared into the margins of a Betjeman anthology or the back room of a transport museum. If you look for it with keen eyes, or listen hard enough, you’ll find the traces.

All along the farthest western reaches of the Metropolitan line the conceit still lingers. Someone threw an idea across Middlesex so profound as to resonate over a 100 years later.

It’s there in the rustle of leaves, the sigh of a sash window, the creak of a set of points, the song of a bird whose location you can’t quite place… All common sensations, but all somehow elevated by virtue of geography to become both part-mundane and part-magical.

The entrance to Ickenham station can make you shudder with despair:

*shudder*But its platforms can make you shiver with delight:

The joy of MiddlesexHere is where Metro-land can, if you so desire, be wished back into all-consuming existence.

Sit by these trees and imagine yourself surrounded by roads bordered with the softest of soft suburban grass, patronised by neatly turned-out vehicles peopled by neatly turned-out passengers, and lined with the most stylish of provincial amenities: a world that, if it ever really existed, fired just as many useful imaginations as it did useless realities.

This, at least, is realDon’t linger too long, however, for the fantasy can only ever be a fleeting one – especially if you’re heading westbound and the next station is the grisly Hillingdon.

Metro-land was once promoted seriously if rather loftily as “a country with elastic borders that each visitor can draw for himself”. That country might have long passed from the lexicon of poets and advertisers alike, but its borders can still be drawn, even though – like anything this old and worn – the elastic’s almost gone.

31. The platforms at Rayners Lane

1 July 2012
Metropolitan line, Numbers 26-50, Piccadilly line, Sensations, Zone 5
2 Comments

Light fantasticI’ve talked before of how some Underground stations, like all of us from time to time, feel better in the dark.

There are also parts of the network that are most flattered by light, specifically the arc of the sun. Obviously these stations are above ground, but they’re not always obviously candidates for celebration.

For much of the time, the most that can be said to commend the platforms at Rayners Lane are the flower beds:

Insert your own "blooming" pun hereBut when the sun starts to set, there’s a clear sky, and you’re facing westbound, something rather beautiful happens.

Let the sun sign inThe platforms are ideally aligned for what astronomers would call an “event”, though in this instance, it’s the juxtaposition of light and metal rather than any celestial bodies. An occasional passing human body won’t diminish the effect, mind:

The long day closesOther stations undoubtedly play host to similar solar-kissed moments. But Rayners Lane is the most extreme, and the most magical, I’ve so far experienced.

Valediction