Quote Of The Day

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)"

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

This town, is coming like a ghost town...
I love the London Underground. OK, it's a bit of a nightmare during the rush hours, it's not the cleanest metro in the world and the Northern Line justly deserves its name as the Misery Line. But otherwise it is fast, convenient and cheap. It is the life blood of London as can be amply demonstrated during tube strikes when lots of people just stay at home. More often than not it gets me from home to work and back again faster than any other method I've tried. It gets me to and from The Vauxhall Tavern on a Sunday. It gets me home from Bar Code or the Retro Bar without fuss. (OK, I *do* get taxis but usually only when I'm drunk!)

When I first started taking the tube on a regular basis some years ago I started to notice the irregular spacing between stations. In particular between Caledonian Road and Kings Cross and between Green Park and Hyde Park Corner on the Piccadilly Line. The reason for this is because between these stations are 'ghost' stations. Disused stops that have long had their entrances and exits boarded up. No longer needed, their platforms lie idle. If you look closely you can see these bricked up stations flashing past. Examples are British Museum, City Road, South Kentish Town, York Road, Marlborough Road and King William Street.

It seems a little sad to me that these stations can't be reopened. One of the official reasons for their original closure was that as tube trains were getting longer so the stations needed to be further apart.

Some stations are still very close to each other though. If you stand at the end of the platform at Covent Garden you can actually see the lights of Leicester Square down the track.

The Tube: what do you think? Love it or loathe it?

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