Tubewhore (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tubewhore) wrote,@ 2006-11-29 19:13:00 |
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| Entry tags: | bakerloo line, edgware road, paddington, station architecture, tiling |
Obsession...
I have a compulsive tendency towards things.
While in London I found myself planning my trip in terms of the stations I could 'get'. If I hadn't overslept on Monday, I was considering riding out to Heathrow to wave![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
speedlime on her way back to America and finishing off the bottom spur of the Piccadilly in the process. This is silly. I'm imposing on my friends. Late the night before I had sat up with a pocket map tippexing out the stations I had collected.
Took great pleasure in carefully erasing things. Reverse map-making. Sitting on the platform to begin my journey back home, I stared at it compulsively, looking at the patterns and gaps, and odd little blips that mess up the logical erasings, the blankings out. Planning logical lines of attack to take out sections most efficiently. The East London line: (including a visit to the closed Shoreditch) down to New Cross, walk to New Cross gate, maybe a yoga class and visit my old Uni, and back up - 8 stations, including knocking out Canada Water from the Jubilee Line. Piccadilly Line: Baron's Court to Heathrow, and back up the loop would clean up 9 stations, before changing at Acton Town on the reverse to sort out Stamford Brook, Ravenscourt Park and West Kensignton on the far west of the District - 12 stops total and a western corner complete. Kew Gardens and Richmond wink at me from the bottom of another District Line spur - even more galling is taking mum out to Petersham on Thursday we passed both on the 65 bus, but not able to drag confused parental off the bus to muck about so necessitating a return journey...Nothing on the Circle Line is only on the Circle Line therefore all those stations can be grabbed in the process of eliminating other lines. I am becoming fixated on when I can next tippex out more! More white space....I was so engrossed in my musing that a chap asked me if I needed help. I must have looked like a tourist . With an hour and a half before my train out West, I changed at Earl's Court, went past my destination of Paddington, and up on the D&C to finish the top of the district spur to Edgware Road. This is the best picture I could get for Earl's Court. No-one would help so had to take the best shot I could myself while actually on the train before the doors shut so as to get the station name in frame...
From there, I walked overground to the Bakerloo Edgware Road station - as per the map, they are quite separate stations, like changing between D&C and Piccadilly lines to the H&C at Hammersmith. This is what the project is about. I would never have seen this part of London otherwise. Nice chap on the platform obliged with the picture:
Perhaps people here less fraught then Earl's Court, but then, up here they don't have to be worrying about which branch of the District the fickle finger of fate will select next:
Outside the District Line ticket hall is a bank of phones with deco lettering and eau de nile glass tiling surrounds; a forgotten monument to fifties futurism. Signage say 'turn right at the lights and pass under the flyover'. It does not also say, 'oh, there a charity shop here too, that you've never been in, but you have a train to catch so just keep moving...Flyover is ugly, and the Bakerloo station nestles beneath the concrete ribbon. The original oxblood exterior has a newer blue awning stuck onto it, obscuring the lovely Edwardian tiles, but inside the tiled Ticket Office surround remains.
Outside the District Line ticket hall is a bank of phones with deco lettering and eau de nile glass tiling surrounds; a forgotten monument to fifties futurism. Signage say 'turn right at the lights and pass under the flyover'. It does not also say, 'oh, there a charity shop here too, that you've never been in, but you have a train to catch so just keep moving...Flyover is ugly, and the Bakerloo station nestles beneath the concrete ribbon. The original oxblood exterior has a newer blue awning stuck onto it, obscuring the lovely Edwardian tiles, but inside the tiled Ticket Office surround remains.
These fragments are such a delight to find, the odd details that survived a hundred and forty odd years. I am quite giddy with excitement at finding the nouveau styling, squeeing over the architectural fabric. My hopping about in glee cause great amusement for smiley staff member, who not only doesn't mind me taking pics of the above, but takes my pic for me. Sadly, very blurred. Would be rude to make him do it again, so it will have to suffice for the Edgware Road Bakerloo proof:
One stop up and I'm back at Paddington. The tiling here is newer, but has a pattern of fragments of engineering plans across it. No-one else is looking at it. Until I started this project, neither would I have done.
Upstairs, I try the ever popular 'straight arm self portrait' technique, but am saved from horrible results by friendly girl in black tights and cut off denim skirt, who asks if I'd like her to take a picture for me.
And so I get my train home, happily saited at getting four more stations knocked off. As I wait for us to pull out of Paddington, I get the tippex out and remove Earl's Court, Edgware Road x2, and Paddington.
Baywater now bothers me irrationally, standing as the last station on that section of D&C as yet ungathered. It taunts me. I'd passed through going up to Edgware Road, and debated hoping out, but, on sticking my head out the carriage door, as there were no other through trains listed on the platform indicator I'd decided not to risk a long wait, and missing my train home. I stare at it on the map, as though by will alone it willl have the good grace to not exist. I remember that there is a Patisserie Valerie there, and that you can walk easily between it and Queenway, so I can thread in and out via the Central Line on a later jaunt...
