24. The exterior of Perivale

5 June 2012
Architecture, Central line, Numbers 1-25, Zone 4
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Peer-ivalePerivale station was given Grade II listed status in July 2011. I’m surprised this took so long. The building was opened in 1947, meaning a total of 64 years passed before it was deemed worth protecting in law.

This does seem an awfully lengthy period. I’d have thought – or hoped – the station’s elegance and style would have been self-evident the moment it was finished.

Perhaps there was lingering ill-feeling towards such a unashamedly modernist construction taking the place of what went before, for there has been a station a Perivale since 1904. And to be fair, the original incarnation does sound quite charming, with “long wooden platforms” and “pagoda huts”.

But times, and tastes, change. I’m not sorry this rather dashing building exists.

On the list

23. The clocks at Hammersmith

27 May 2012
District line, Numbers 1-25, Objects, Piccadilly line, Zone 2
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Minute precisionI didn’t go looking for these. I found them by accident while searching for something else. As is always the case in such circumstances, their discovery was all the more delightful.

I spotted two of them, though there may be more. One is in the main hall of the Hammersmith station that serves the Piccadilly and District lines. Another is on the westbound District line platform.

I received more than the usual number of inquisitive, not to say menacing, looks from passers-by when taking photos of the clocks, especially the one in the entrance hall.

About faceFunny how, whenever I’m taking these kinds of photographs, a message is “suddenly” broadcast over the station’s public address system reminding passengers to report any “suspicious-looking behaviour”.

If it’s meant to be intimidatory, it works. I always put my camera away and beat a retreat.

By the big handThe clocks are, as the pictures hopefully suggest, completely charming. The colours of the two lines the station serves – Piccadilly (dark blue) and District (green) – form the outer ring, while the 12 hours of the day are denoted by the Underground map symbols for a station and an interchange. So simple, but so effective.

Why the hands of the clock are the colour of the Central line, which runs nowhere near Hammersmith, is another matter… although if it’s been done just to make the whole timepiece look nice, that’s fine with me.

22. The Underground in snow

25 May 2012
Numbers 1-25, Sensations
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The white stuffWhen it snows in London, the city loses a million rough edges and raw surfaces.

Everything is smoothed over. The coarse, noisy cornerstones of the capital are substituted for oases of soft serenity. It becomes possible, just for a short while, to hear the sound of silence.

Unassuming objects take on an incredible beauty – but a beauty that is all the more affecting by virtue of being fleeting. You don’t know for how long this change will remain, or when you’ll get to see it again.

It’s a transformation that never fails to enchant me, appealing to various lingering sentimental and childlike traits. As I get older I become more stubborn in my fondness for snow, and at the same time less tolerant of people for whom it is merely an inconvenience. With each passing winter I am increasingly baffled at how something so infrequent and uncontrollable is, for some, a thing to be despised and rather brutally tamed.

Newspaper headlines always equate snow with transport misery. Yet it also works magic.

Take the Underground, or rather those stretches of line above ground. All the varied and inspired shapes and colours that comprise the network’s tapestry of stations and lines are suddenly subverted, or enhanced, or disguised, in the process ending up even more beguiling.

For some, the sight of a railway station in snow epitomises delay and despair. For me, it spells excitement.

Walk out to winter

For the most part, the Underground copes astonishingly well in heavy snow. Inevitably there are times when the network reels and falls over. But it’s never for that long. Plans are put in place, extemporised services spring into life, emergency timetables take root.

And all those quieter, more far-flung stations show remarkable fortitude, remaining open as long as possible, becoming still more of a beacon, a lifeline, a sanctuary.

Standing room only

Why do rows of railway tracks appear so acutely evocative, even romantic, when carving their way stoically not just through a landscape of urban or suburban sprawl, but one that is also decked in snow?

Perhaps it’s something to do with the way they represent permanence, familiarity, even reassurance, among all the novelty and dislocation. Those tracks still know the way home, even if you don’t.

Moreover, the carriages that run along those tracks can still take you home.

Why not step inside?

No more enticing a sight