Mopping Up

 I've been on holiday.

Don't panic; this isn't the beginning of an eighteen part series on the underground stations of Buenos Aires.  (Although if anyone would like to give me the money to go to Argentina to write an eighteen part series on Buenos Aires, feel free.  I've been watching Celebrity Race Across The World and Argentina looks amazing).  No, this was a holiday with the BF in France, and it mostly involved doing this:

However, the trip to Nice meant I didn't finish the Sweden trip write up. Oh yes, there's more!  Try to conceal your excitement.  On my last day in Stockholm, my flight back to Manchester wasn't until the evening, so obviously I had to lark about on the railways for a bit until it was time to go home.  I'll try and keep this brief.

The Roslagsbanan: Stockholms Östra to Vallentuna

Stockholms Östra is the terminus of the Roslagsbanan, the light railway that goes through the north-east of the city region and which I previously yammered on about in the post about Universitetet.  One look at the station and you know that this is the unwanted child of the SL network; it's been done up recently, apparently, but it was still basically a few platforms behind a building with very little in the way of facilities or excitement.  (I will emphasise I was there on a Sunday morning, so maybe it's a throbbing hotspot on a Monday).

With it being the weekend, I expected it to be relatively peaceful there, but actually the station was abuzz with Gentlemen Of A Certain Type.  I'd followed two of them out of the Tengiska högskolan tunnelbana station, a pair of excitable teen boys who were definitely not the type to smoke fags and drink Mad Dog 20/20 on their lunch hour.  They had backpacks and big headphones and were chatting away to one another, almost over one another, and I recognised them as Railway Fans.

It seemed I'd arrived at Östra on a day when there was going to be heritage trains running, and an unfair part of me would say, "how can they tell?"  That rickety thing on the platform above is the normal engine for the service and it looks like it should be carrying a worried defector to the Russian border in a Cold War drama.  

In fairness, when my train turned up, it was a much newer model, with decent suspension and a less rickety air.  It was soundly ignored by the Men Who Like Trains, who were dashing down the platform in search of more niche thrills.  Good luck to you, fellas.

I took the train to Vallentuna, towards the top of the Karsta line (number 27).  Why did I pick this particular spot?  It was as good as any, I suppose.  It was a small suburb.  It had a bus that would take me away from the Roslagsbanan to my next station.  Why not?

Actually the main reason I went there was so I could make this joke on Twitter.

One like.  You people don't deserve me.

A brief turn around the block revealed a small pedestrianised shopping centre with a Coop and a library, a fire station, and some teenagers being dead excitable as they headed into town for hi-jinks.  Meanwhile, I waited at a bus stop for my ride.

Upplands Väsby

This is a commuter station and is in an area that felt distinctly down at heel.  I'm probably going to get a bunch of comments from irate Swedes telling me that this is in fact Stockholm's version of Hampstead but the buildings we passed on the bus looked tired and unedifying, and the people waiting with me on the platform had a vaguely grimy air to them.

The Pendeltåg is the heavy rail network around the city, the one that descends into a tunnel to go to Stockholm City and out the other side.  It was particularly well patronised that day, as I was about to discover.

Solna

I'd planned a little trip to Solna because it's fast developing into the Stratford of Stockholm.  What was just a single stop on the Pendeltåg has been joined in recent years by the terminus of the Tvärbanan, the cross-city tram line, and is about to get the end of the Green Line extension too.

One of the main reasons for this significant upgrade in facilities was the construction of what is currently known (for sponsorship reasons) as the Strawberry Arena.  This is the Swedish FA's new national stadium (which is why the new Green Line station will be called Arenastaden rather than Solna).  It's also the home of the AIK football team and, as it turned out, they were having a match not long after I arrived at the station, meaning there were crowds of people in scarves heading that way.  I decided to skip having a look at the arena and instead went into the nearby Mall of Scandinavia to find myself a sandwich.

It's a Westfield Mall and if you told me they'd copied and pasted the plans for Westfield Stratford and added Swedish subtitles I'd have believed you.  Inside it was the same copy book of dark malls constantly curving around on themselves so you couldn't see what was ahead, facilities hidden to the side, pointless kiosks getting in your way.  Lots of glowing lights and not much actual substance.

I ate my sandwich on the plaza outside, watching the crowds push by, then walked round the block to the back entrance to Solna.  This was a lot quieter, as it opened out into a residential district, and the only excitement here was some lads with backpacks being dropped off by a very battered car.

But wait!  There is a little more.  I couldn't let my final post about Stockholm go by without mentioning The Art.

By Olle Brand, it's this odd bronze shape on the platform.  It can't compete with the magnificence of Solna Centrum... but let's face it, what can?

Museum Piece

 

Not far from Ropsten station, a short walk round the back of some sports courts, is the Gasverket district.  As the name - and the architecture - implies, this used to be the site of Stockholm's gasworks, until technological advances rendered them obsolete.  The natural response to this was to build a new district here; close to the T-bana, overlooking the coast, with new schools and facilities to encourage growth.

One way to encourage people to visit your new district is to locate a tourist attraction there, and in 2022 the Spårvägsmuseet, or Tramway Museum, opened in the former scrubbing plant for the gasworks.  It covers all of Stockholm's public transport and it is bloody marvellous.

I wasn't even planning on visiting.  It was only when I'd come out of Ropsten station that I'd spotted the board pointing me in its direction.  With the Lidingöbanan behind me, and it still being the afternoon, I thought why not get a bit of culture?  I'd come all the way to Stockholm and not visited a single tourist hotspot; what could be more on brand than this one?

Every aspect of the network is covered here.  At the top, you get a historical perspective; the evolution of Stockholm's transport, with ferries, horse-drawn carts and the like.  As you work your way down, you advance through time, with social and engineering advances covered equally.  You get vehicles:

You get architectural features:

You get pieces about uniforms and the people who wore them:

You get interactive displays with saucy looking actors:

I was particularly taken with the map gallery, as you'd expect, which included T-bana maps from both the past...

...and the future:

I mean, it's all incredible.  I wandered around with a giddy smile on my face, enjoying every moment of it.  I'll also point out that every single label is in both Swedish and English, meaning us ignorant Brits can enjoy the museum just as much as the locals.  We are so lucky.

As you'd expect, the museum is very popular with young children, with plenty of interactive buttons and videos and little games for them to play.  It was a weekend afternoon and the whole building echoed with excited screams.  There's also a tiny train for them to ride and it is adorable.

My only complaint is that the shop's a bit rubbish.  The London Transport Museum has taken way, way, way too much of my hard earned cash over the years, and I looked forward to handing over an enormous amount of money at its Stockholm equivalent.  I'd not bought any souvenirs of my trip and I thought maybe I could get a nice t-shirt with the circle T logo, or some pointless and yet lovely ornament.

No such luck.  The museum shop is very much child-oriented and so none of the t-shirts were available in adult sizes.  Worse, most of its merch seemed to be aimed at school parties with a few kroner to spend - post it notes, erasers, badges and the like.  Nothing a grown up transport nerd could spend his cash on.  In the end I bought three books, one about each of the T-bana lines, even though they were in Swedish; I wanted to buy something and I can never resist a book.  I'll have to read them through the lens of Google Translate.

When I got home I sent the museum an e-mail, politely complaining that I had a load of money I literally couldn't spend. I got a very nice reply from an Eijla Berglund, who's in charge of the store, saying that they're definitely hoping to upgrade it and will have more nerdy adult stuff later in the year.  Oh no, I'll have to go back now, what a shame.

Funnily enough, not long after I returned to the UK, the BBC published an article saying that this area was exactly what Birkenhead was after.  It named this specific district as the ideal for when Birkenhead builds its Dock Branch Park, together with its own transport museum.  The Scouse version is sadly entirely dependent on external funding and is significantly less ambitious; the article mentions that the hope is for 1200 new homes, while Stockholm is delivering 12,000.  I'd love to see this level of dense, well-built regeneration in Birkenhead, but it'll probably end up being a load of Barratt Homes and empty plots with a possible start date of 2054.  (I first covered The Transport Shed on the Dock Branch in 2021; there's been absolutely no progress since and now they've concluded it's too expensive to build and are going to expand the existing Wirral Transport Museum.  Don't hold your breath).  

In the meantime, go to Stockholm.  Go to the Spårvägsmuseet.  It's ace.

The museum website is here and it's also brilliant.

Notes from a Tramline

The Lidingöbanan is a tram line that goes from Ropsten to Gåshaga Brygge on the island of Lidingö.  Like much of Stockholm's light rail networks, it's spent much of its life being threatened with closure.  Indeed, it used to have a second branch, one that went into the town of Lidingö itself, but that was closed decades ago.  The existing line only clung on because it passed the huge AGA factory and was useful for the workers; now, in the 21st century, the line is being celebrated as the valuable transport link it is.

The eventual hope is that it will be extended south on the Ropsten side, along the docks, encouraging regeneration there and facilitating homes and businesses to be built, before joining up with the Spårväg City tramline.  That would enable journeys between destinations on the east of the city without needing to go into the centre of Stockholm, and would give T-Centralen yet another destination.  Funding is, of course, the problem, with SL prioritising the T-bana extensions and the Roslagsbanan improvements first.

Sat at home in front of my computer, I'd thought "and obviously once I get to Ropsten I'll simply collect all twelve stops on the Lidingöbanan as well."  I'd not realised how tired I'd be after collecting 100 stations, or how melancholic at knowing my trip was coming to an end.  Instead I took the escalator down from the T-bana station and sat on a tram and simply rode it.  As I did, I made a load of notes - impressions, really - of what was happening as I travelled and what I saw.  That's what follows in this blog post.  Think of it as sketching rather than proper writing.

Tram is new and quick.  Vague sound of a noisy child somewhere at the back.  A couple chat, continuously, casually.  Across the way, a handsome man in a blue linen shirt and jeans.

Electric whirr and we're away.  Over the new bridge, speeding up to the central hump.  Ticket inspector appears in a baseball cap and scans my app. On the island now, drop into a gully for Torsvik, a high wall of red rock soaring up.  You have to ring the bell to stop the tram, like a bus.  Cruise ships in port across the water.  Handsome Man has closed his eyes to doze.

More rocky walls at Baggeby plus the hint of a red home poking over the trees.  More trees and a neatly mown embankment then concrete and cars at Bodal.  Handsome Man has woking up and is resting his Adidases on the seat support in front.  Larsberg, and a university building, then an ICA supermarket and the first visible apartment buildings.  Feels so rural here the apartments seem out of place.  You hear island, you think out of the way.

The round roofs of the depot as we approach AGA.  Is this the same AGA as the posh cookers?  I've never really found out.  People get on - a man with a moustache and thick glasses, two teenage girls in matching white blouses.  1920s factory building - is it still in use?  The noisy baby is now a crying baby.

Skärsätra has an old fashioned waiting room, with tiled roof and wooden walls, set back from the narrow tram platform.  The baby and her mother got off here.  Tram is quiet and smooth.  We skip Kottla - nobody rang the bell - and a spurt of speed through the woods, rocky embankments whizzing past.  A level crossing holds back a single car.  Högsberga is a proper village with many passengers waiting.  Dark wooden maisonette homes, a sports field with goal.  

Brevik has five storey apartment blocks and another tram waiting on the opposite platform.  We pause together, then move in opposing directions.  Handsome Man has sat silently the whole trip, not checking his phone once, and alights at Käppala alongside a bullet-headed bald man.  Another old shelter but this one is covered with wooden shutters.  Allotments at the side of the track - upside down umbrellas to collect the rain - light industry starting to appear at Gåshaga.  Port industries.  

Final stretch.  Scaffolding and more red houses.  Newer apartments built for the tram.  

Terminus.

I got off the tram and had a wander round Gåsjaga brygga.  There's not much to it; an ostentatious building that once held a cafe but is now closed, some apartment blocks built for the view.  The main attraction here is the ferry dock.

I thought about getting a ferry.  Not sure where to, just jumping aboard.  Part of me wanted to do that for the rest of the day, for the rest of the year.  Island hopping, passing round the archipelago, visiting the different ports.

If I'd started I'd have never got back to England.  I'd be bushy bearded, wearing raggedy clothes, the ghost of a ferry traveller haunting all the docks.  Whispered about by the crews.

Instead I went back to the tram.  I had to, really.  And I love a tram.

One Hundred And Out

 

After the rainbow goodness of Stadion, Östermalmstorg's general beigeness came as quite a shock.  It wasn't that it was ugly, per se; indeed, there was something charmingly early 1960s about it.  The low ceiling and pale tilework were redolent of an era of municipal pride, of marble and civic goodness, respectful and subtle.

Apart from The Art.  That seemed accidental.  Siri Derkert did some sketches and they were transferred directly into the concrete walls, which is a fair idea, except when she said "sketches" you sort of expect something that didn't look like she doodled it while she was on the phone.

If you didn't know better, you might think that someone had snuck down here and slapped some graffiti over the walls.  Not cool graffiti; not Banksy-type artwork.  More hastily scrawled nonsense you get on park benches.

Actually the best bit of Östermalmstorg is this circulation space at the bottom of the escalators which manages to be both practical and epic.

There's also this column in the ticket hall that looks like it's made of drug capsules.  If that's your thing.

I emerged in the Östermalmstorg itself, a public square undergoing a lot of refurbishment work; there were a wooden barriers covered with CGI images and promises about the all new square.  I couldn't decide if Stockholm's undergoing a massive regeneration project everywhere or if I just happened to keep walking into areas that are being rebuilt.

Overlooking the corner of the square is the Saluhall, the Market Hall, a grand red building that practically begs you to walk inside.  

I'm not a foodie.  I'm happy with a pizza and a beer.  I eat because I have to or I'll die, not because I especially love the experience.  (How then are you so fat?, I hear you ask.  Please note the word "beer" in the earlier sentence).  I do like going to places that sell food though.  A restaurant, a market, or in, this case, a food hall.  It becomes dramatic, an experience.

The Saluhall should be photographed and sent to every council in the UK as an example of how a Market Hall can be successful in the 21st century.  Liverpool recently closed its St John's Market after spending millions refurbishing it because, well, it was still horrible and nobody wanted to visit it.  

This is food as theatre, as a location to visit.  I wandered around the stalls - calling them stalls seems reductive, but there you are - looking at the most incredible vegetables, fish and cheeses.  They were accompanied by dishes made from the produce, all for sale, though I glanced past the prices so that it didn't ruin my day with a how much for a quiche!?!? exclamation.  I was happy wandering along the aisles and simply ogling.

In the evenings, tables are laid and restaurants using the produce open.  There was a wine bar too, where some classy looking ladies sipped whites.  This wouldn't work everywhere but this is the ideal.  If they ever get round to rebuilding Birkenhead Market this is what we can dream of.  It'll probably end up still a few shabby tables flogging LFC tat and an overwhelming stench of herring but we can dream.

I disappeared into the streets north of the square, quiet on a Saturday morning.  The closed offices were home to exciting businesses like PR companies and graphic designers, while the restaurants were prepping for lunchtime visits from the glamorous shoppers from Birgir Jarlsgarten's designer stores.

I ended up on the Karlavägen, one of those long straight avenues that European cities do so well and which we don't bother with.  Our avenues tend to be bendy, loopy, accidental.  If they've got trees down the middle, it's not to encourage perambulation, it's because there used to be a tram line there and it was ripped up in the Fifties.  

I'd left the train at Östermalmstorg with a small family, a mother and two teenage daughters, and I was surprised to see them ahead of me on the Karlavägen.  The girls were extremely excitable, like they were heading for a meet and greet with Harry Styles, and I couldn't quite work out why.  

The answer came when we reached Karlaplan, a large roundabout with a park and a water feature at its centre.  On Saturdays a flea market sets up here, and it seems that the privileged location attracts stallholders who are a cut above.  The teenage girls immediately ran to the racks of clothing at one stand.  I guessed, though obviously I'm no expert, that it was a smashing spot to get second hand designer bargains.

I followed the throngs, looking at the stalls.  Some were clearly flogging warehouse tat, the result of a mad dash around a cash and carry to buy low and sell high.  There were a couple selling, shall we say, grey products - vape flavours, that sort of thing.  But the majority seemed to be people setting up a folding table and settling in for the day with the contents of their spare room.  Beaming old ladies sat next to some of the most horrible vases you've ever seen.

I did a quarter turn of the gyratory and then headed into the T-bana station.  Its platforms had a similar, early Sixties vibe to Östermalmstorg, but it had a clash of artworks.  Along the track walls was a photomontage from 1983, depicting Swedish history.

It's ok, but I much prefer the tiled seating alcoves.  They date back to the station's opening and are far more aesthetically pleasing.

Is this because I'm a sad old git who'd much prefer it if Britain still retained its Festival of Britain-era look instead of all this shiny modern nonsense?  Who can say?

I was surprised by how busy Gärdet was.  It was the second to last station on the line; I expected it to be a small suburban halt with more people heading into town than on this train going north.  Yet the train opened its doors and a huge mob poured out alongside.

Curious, I tagged along behind the crowds, wondering where they were headed.  They were lively and giggly, laughing, chatting.  We walked along a passageway dotted with display cases for local stores and emerged at the foot of some apartments.  At the end of the pedestrianised section, the crowd immediately turned right, as one.

I'd love to finish this barely-an-anecdote with them going to a concert, or a tv station, or a cult meeting.  It turned out they were headed for the park.  These were healthy, jolly, lovely people off to spend their Saturday on the grass with a picnic.  I was pleased for them but also a bit disappointed.  

I returned to the residential area, looping back to the station.  

If I was doing this correctly, I should've walked to Ropsten.  That's the usual procedure.  My brain fritzed at that point and sent me back underground for a train.  I'm not sure why, but I think it may have been my subconscious at work.

Gärdet was my 99th station on the Tunnelbana.  Ropsten would be the 100th and last.  I think my brain secretly decided that I had to arrive there by train.  It wanted it done properly. 

Ropsten is on the far side of a mountain, and so the trains burst out of the tunnel and terminate at an open air platform.  This wasn't the original plan; the idea was that the Red Line would continue across the strait on a bridge and terminate in an underground station at Lidingö Centrum.  The residents were all for it until SL explained that, to help pay for it, they'd have to agree to a few thousand more homes being built nearby.  At which point the residents of Lindingö decided that an influx of newcomers would destroy the precious atmosphere of their island and declined the T-bana extension.  You have to admire that level of snobbery.

The Art at Ropsten is by Roland Kempe and is largely this double headed snake.  I'm not sure it has any relevance to the station or the locale other than "why not?" and for that it should be applauded.

There are two exits to Ropsten.  One leads you out into a bus gyratory, and is currently being comprehensively rebuilt.  The other is a long tunnel with a travelator, taking you through the mountain and into the residential district beyond.  Of course I took the latter one: you had me at "travelator".  I might've been less inclined to take it if I'd known I'd get stuck behind a pair of old gits who decided to stand on the belt, not moving, blocking any movement behind with their bags.  Stand on the right, hold on tight, come on!

One last opportunity for me to laugh at the Swedish language; their word for "lift" is "hiss", meaning that "lift to Gatuplan" translates as "Hiss till Gatuplan".  Well, I laughed.  

I finally got past Howard and Hilda and left the travelator, passing through the ticket hall and stepping out into a plaza at the foot of the mountain.  

One hundred.  Done.

It's always a weird feeling when I complete one of these collecting quests.  There should be a sense of achievement; a warm flow of victory at crossing the final name off the list.  And there was a little bit of that.  I wondered how many other people had done the same as me.  Probably lots of people had visited all the stations, but how many had explored the city around them?  More to the point, how many people had flown thousands of miles to do it and hadn't even visited the ABBA Museum in the process?

I was pleased but my overriding feeling was sadness.  That was it, then.  Stockholm was finished.  I wished I could carry on.  I wished, in fact, that I'd spent a month doing this.  One hundred in a week was far more of a marathon than I realised.  I wished I could've spread it out and elongated each trip.  Four or five in a day, rather than twenty.  Had a proper poke around.  I wish it had taken me as long to visit as it had to write it.

There's still a few more Stockholm blogs to come; a tram, a museum, a trip on the light rail.  But this is the last of the Tunnelbana.  It's a weird, wonderful, awe-inspiring network.  It's unlike any other Metro I've ever been on.  It should be what everyone else in the world is aiming for.