I'm On The Right Track Baby - I U-Bahn This Way

It's September, the traditional time for gays to holiday.  We move as a pack once the children and families have cleared out of the airports.  Whole bushels of homos sweep across the globe, taking advantage of the  cheaper rates and empty hotels to get a little last minute sun and fun.

The Bf and I decided that we'd forgo our usual tan-fest and instead get a bit of culture, so we headed to Berlin, capital of Germany and all round fun city.  The Bf's been here quite a few times over the years, but the last time I came here it was 2000, so I was curious to see how it had changed.

I'm not going to bore you with a complete "what I did on my holiday" essay; this isn't class 3D at Junior School, and you're not Mrs Devine.  Instead I'll bore you with a run-down of just the stations I visited.  Because of course I went round the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn; I'm nothing if not consistent.  A true railway station geek doesn't take a holiday.

Berlin Schönefeld S9 S45 DB

It started, as it does for most tourists, at the airport.  And it wasn't the greatest of beginnings.

Schönefeld is about to be replaced as an airport: just up the road, the massive Berlin-Brandenburg is being constructed, which will replace the city's current three airports with a gleaming new one.  Of course, there will also be a S-Bahn and Deutsche Bahn (DB) station.  Until then, you're stuck with this relic.  Built quickly in the 1950s, this is just a subway with some platforms attached.  Imagine Clapham Junction without its charm or personality.

I'm guessing that the minute Berlin-Brandenburg started construction, DB decided not to bother putting any more money into Schönefeld.  It certainly feels that way.

Its most heinous crime is a lack of ticket facilities.  Every day, thousands of confused foreigners pour into the station, and they're confronted with ticket machines.  That's it.  There isn't a single human being there to provide assistance, unless you count the hawkers with their genuine/fake Communist badges being sold from a blanket.  Thanks to the Bf's experience, we knew what ticket and what train to take, but imagine arriving from, say, Tokyo, and not having anyone to ask.

I'll return to the theme of ticket offices later on.  You've been warned.

Berlin Zoologischer Garten U2 U9 S3 S5 S7 S75 DB

This is more like it.

Zoo was the central station for the Western sector during the Cold War, and despite the opening of the Hauptbanhof, it still retains a lot of its importance.  It has that buzzy, intercontinental feel that all good European stations carry with them, a mix of the dangerous and the banal that's quite heady.

Again, it's no looker, but it's a far more fascinating mess.  It looks like it gets the once over with a chamois leather now and then, for starters.  And of course you're in Berlin proper now, not its outer limits, so there's the thrill of stepping out into a new city.

It's a thrill that's slightly ruined because you have to step out into a tedious bus terminal, but no matter.  Hello Zoo.  Nice to see you.

Mohrenstraße U2


Have you ever had one of those moments where you look at your partner and think, "erm... okay?"

The Bf is extremely tolerant of my metro station fetish, and regularly asks me in new cities "do you want to do some train things?"  Bless him.  However, he was insistent that we visit Mohrenstraße station, for reasons unclear to me.

I mean, it was a nice enough station: a classic of the U-Bahn genre.  A shallow island platform, accessed by steps from each end, and nicely decorated.  It's about as typical a station as you can get.

Once we were down there, though, the Bf leaned in close and whispered, "You see the marble on the walls?  That came from Hitler's Reich Chancellory!"  It was said with such glee that I was forced to seriously re-evaluate his position on the Nazis.

Don't get me wrong: the Bf is, and always has been, slightly to the left of Marx.  He's been a member of the Anti-Nazi League, a left-wing councillor, a trade unionist, and if it were up to him we'd all be wearing boiler suits and singing The Red Flag before breakfast.  He does, however, have a minor fascination with the National Socialists and their influence on Berlin.  We all have our foibles.

A little internet research when we got back revealed it wasn't even true - chemical analysis in the 2000s showed it was mined from an East German quarry after the war, not stripped from Hitler's lounge before the Soviets demolished it.  It carries on as an urban legend however, giving wide eyed tourists something to stare at.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park U2


Oh, my mistake: I can't bring you the details of this station after all.  I'd gone out on my own for the morning, while the Bf slept off a sambucca-induced hangover, and I'd ended up outside Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park.  I'd left without my wallet, but I had a twenty Euro note and a day pass was only €13, so I figured I'd be fine.

I'd reckoned without the ticket machines.  One was out of order, and the remaining five machines rejected my note.  Every single one of them.  If this were the UK, I could have presented myself to the ticket office and paid for it there, but there wasn't a single member of staff available.  In fact, there wasn't even a ticket office: the station had been built without one.

I could have just jumped on a train, because there are no ticket gates.  BVG not only trusts you to be honest enough to buy a ticket before boarding, but also has no way of stopping you getting on without one.  There are ticket inspectors who cruise the network, but I didn't see a single one in four days.  I can't decide if this means that German people are extremely trustworthy or if British people are just really untrustworthy.

I didn't get on the train without a ticket of course.  I just didn't get on a train.  I walked back out the way I came and did without.  I've said it before but: no stations without ticket offices.  Ever.

Hauptbahnhof and Brandenburger Tor U55


Merseytart presents: the sad case of the U55.


Once upon a time, the German government decided to build a brand new main station for Berlin. The Hauptbahnhof would be right in the centre of the city, close to the new Government District, and it would be connected to the U5 U-Bahn line.  Construction began in the 1990s.

Then tragedy struck: they ran out of money.  So they stopped building it.  At which point, the German government tapped Berlin on the shoulder and asked for its money back.  It was decided it was cheaper to run a shuttle service than give the government its money.  And so the Hauptbahnhof's new underground line only went three stops, and only had one train on it, and no-one used it.  The end.

Of course I had to ride the U55.

I started at the Hauptbahnhof, which I'll cover in more detail in a future blog post, because trust me it needs one.  The Bf and I went hunting for the U-Bahn station, but it was strangely difficult to find.  It was tucked away, off to one side.

The first thing that strikes you is how much space there is.  The second thing is, where are all the passengers?  It's a weird little stub.  Think about it: this connects Berlin's Waterloo (Hauptbahnhof) with its Westminster (Bundestag) and finishes at its Trafalgar Square (Brandeburger Tor) - and no-one seems to want to use it.  Very odd.

It's been beautifully put together: you can at least see where the money went.  The decorations are well moulded, it's shiny and clean, and there's a big fence down one side so you don't try to use the wrong platform.  Oh.

We waited five minutes or so for the next shuttle train, which disgorged an excited school party and no-one else.  The train whizzed through to Bundestag, where a half a dozen people boarded, then on to Brandenburger Tor, where we all got out.  And that was it.

Brandenburger Tor is an even better U-Bahn station than Hauptbahnhof.  It's been beautifully tiled, with illuminated wall panels showing the history of the Brandenburg Gate, and a great lighting scheme.  

And of course, step outside and you have the Brandenburger Tor itself right in front of you: the station exits directly onto the Parisier Platz.  It's a great effort.  Shame it's all gone to waste really.

It's not all bad news.  The work on joining the U55 to the U5 has finally started up again.  The U5 is the only line completely within the old East Berlin, and the 2.2km extension will bring it across the divide at last.  Somewhere around 2017 this little stub will cease to exist, and people might actually be able to appreciate it.

Potsdamer Platz U2 S1 S2 S25 DB


I'd been to  Potsdamer Platz once before, when I'd visited in the year 2000.  Then, it had been a nice impressive entrance to a building site.  All that had surrounded the station's escalators had been cranes and hoardings.


It's changed a bit since then.

That's the DB headquarters, looming over a busy road junction.  The cuboid structure on the right is the entrance to the railway station - the highest building around when I last visited, and now a dwarf among giants.  It was a staggering transformation.

Underground, it's not quite so impressive.  Potsdamer Platz station's had a bit of a cosmetic make-over, but it is still at heart the same building that opened decades ago.  You can hardly blame the Berliners for concentrating their regeneration efforts in the area elsewhere.

Alexanderplatz U2 U5 U8 S3 S5 S7 S75 DB 


What Zoo was to West Berlin, Alexanderplatz was to East Berlin.  It was the hub around which the city's transport revolved.

The Bf had brought me here because he had promised me the "best cafe in Berlin".  I had visions of kaffee und kuchen in a beautiful German tea room.  Thick, lavish slices of ridiculous gateau accompanied by pot after pot of strong creamy liquid.

Alexanderplatz itself teased me with its retail provision.  This beautiful bakery was right on the platform itself, filling the underground station with the smell of fresh bread, pastries and pretzels.  I think MtoGo might have to buck its ideas up, frankly.

Up above, Alexanderplatz is separated into two sites.  The S-Bahn and mainline are in a massive terminal across the side of the square, while the U-Bahn station is built below it, meaning you need to rise above ground to visit it.  Not too much of a hassle, as it means you get to see the Fernsehturm rearing above your head as you transfer.

Oh, and the "greatest cafe in Berlin"?  Turned out to be the top floor canteen at the Galeria Kaufman department store.  Which was nice and all, but at the end of the day, it was a department store cafe.  We could have pretty much gone to Debenhams in Liverpool.

I'm going to stop my Berlin adventures there, because there is still a load of stations to come and I don't want to bore anyone to death.  Expect a part two in the next day or so.  Please come back then...

The Sea Mammal For All Your Transport Needs

Well, this is a first. I'm actually sat in a foreign airport lounge right now, tapping away on my iPod and creating a blog post. I feel very cosmopolitan. Shame it's only Prague*, not some far flung outpost in the South China Sea. (Oh, and I'm on my way home, before you consider burgling my house). I apologise in advance for any Damn You Autocorrect! type errors.

Anyway: I simply had to put finger to virtual keyboard so I could pass judgement on the Walrus.

Walrus. Still doesn't sound right. Maybe it will sound ok by the time I get to the end of this post.

If you weren't aware, Walrus is the name of Merseytravel's new travel smart card, soon to be rolled out across the region. It was launched yesterday at an event I was invited to, but couldn't attend because I was getting rained on in the Czech Republic at the time. (Merseytravel refused to postpone it, which is a poor show).

So, the Walrus. (Nope, not yet). It's black with yellow highlights. It's quite a groovy font. And soon it will be your pass to all sorts of Merseyside transport options, with all season ticket holders converted by next year and a pay as you go version implemented by 2013. This is Liverpool's Oyster card, and I couldn't be more excited if Russell Tovey burst naked into my bedroom with a bootleg copy of the next Bond film and a litre of Absolut vodka. Alright, maybe not that excited.

The smart card was one of the best things to happen to public transport ticketing in London, and I'm really happy that Merseytravel are spearheading its roll out in the regions. The PTE already has a strong identity and corporate involvement, so it's a natural to implement it. Plus they've picked a technology for the system which seems future-proof, ready for any national ticketing scheme which is introduced.

But... that name.

You know what it sounds like to me? A leftover from the dot-com boom, when everything had to have a cutesy name. "I know we're called International Global Packaging Solutions in the real world, but we need a memorable online presence. Hence, lovablemonkfish.com!".

Walrus just doesn't do it for me. Do we really want this new, exciting, futuristic innovation associated with a big fat mammal that spends its afternoons wallowing on seashores? Then kills penguins [citation needed]? A Walrus's most notable feature is its comedy moustache. I thought Scousers were trying to get away from that sort of stereotyping.

Plus there's I Am The Walrus. More bloody Beatles tie ins. I'd have preferred the Prudence, myself. Or Lovely Rita, because it means you don't have to see a meter maid at all. I'm reaching, I know, but that's because I'm a normal person who lives on Merseyside and who quite likes the Beatles; you know, the kind of person who'll be using the Walrus. Not one of those Japanese tourists doing peace signs outside the Beatles Story.

I'm sure it's been focus grouped to death. I bet there's a massive PowerPoint presentation somewhere at Hatton Gardens, listing Walrus' marketability to users (particularly the 18-34 demographic). I bet that PowerPoint presentation featured both the words 'fresh' AND 'funky'. I bet in a couple of years time wives will be calling "darling, have you seen my Walrus?" up the stairs to their husbands, and no-one will laugh. I just can't see it right now. I feel a bit like I'm watching that episode of The Apprentice where Philip suggested "Pantsman" and no-one sent him to the corner and told him to try harder.

Yep, I've got all the way to the end of the post and I'm still not convinced by Walrus. Nice product. Shame about the brand.

*Don't worry; there are full and indepth blog posts about my holiday antics to come. (You could at least PRETEND to care).

New! Improved! Different!

I've changed the look of the blog.

I've been meaning to do it for a while.  The lovely Jamie designed me a new, ALFie header and sent it to me two months ago.  I loved it of course.  Not least because he did it completely off his own back and didn't ask me or charge me or anything.  I love getting unexpected gifts.

Anyway.  The previous blog template was put together by me using a program called Artisteer, so I tried uploading the new header using that.  It didn't work.  I tried it again.  It didn't work again.  Eventually I swore at Artisteer and slammed my laptop shut.

Then I went to Scotland and London and fanned around a bit and did nothing more about it.

Until tonight, when I thought, that header is just too good for me to waste.  Besides, it's a bit rude of me not to use it.

And so I just used one of Bloggers Blog-standard templates and fiddled with it a bit and after a lot more swearing, I got it working.

So here we are.  The blog now features its very own ALF.  Plus it has the smiley train. And the man giving his boyfriend a bunch of flowers.

I'm still not 100% sure about the background though.  That may change.

I hope you like it.  Actually a part of me doesn't care if you don't: it's my blog and I can do what I like on it.  But I'm also quite needy and crave positive feedback (did I mention I'm on pills?) so if you do like it, let me know.  And let Jamie know.  He's also quite needy.

Pilgrimage

Sometimes you have to pay your respects to someone great.  Sometimes you have to pay homage to someone who has influenced and inspired you.  I had one of those days while I was in London.

Charles Holden was an architect.  And, by the way, he was also a genius.  Holden was a man who embraced modernity and simplicity and applied it beautifully to the most everyday buildings.  He changed our perceptions of buildings and what they mean to us.

Holden was born in 1875 in Bolton, and took up draughting in his spare time.  He was an enthusiastic and innovative designer from an early age, and he was soon creating houses and hospitals.  His design for Bristol Central Library, an innovative conglomeration of a building that paid homage to the city's cathedral without being overawed. won him plaudits immediately, and is now Grade I listed.  

After the First World War, Holden worked on many of the designs for Imperial War Graves across Europe and the UK, and the simple clean lines of the cemeteries informed his later architectural work.  He worked with them for a number of years, until Frank Pick called and asked him to work on designs for new Underground stations.

If you've never heard of Frank Pick, you have him to thank for much of the look of today's London Underground.  Pick was General Manager at the time, and he was the man created what was probably the world's first corporate identity.  Pick enforced a standard across the whole network: he was the man who commissioned Johnstone's Underground font, he was the man who came up with the "bullseye" logo for LU's services, and he was the man who approved the use of Harry Beck's diagram.  His eye for detail and fondness for simplicity - design that worked - are principles that the Underground still thrives on.

Pick commissioned Holden to design the new stations for the Northern Line extension to Morden.  Holden came up with a simple design which was varied slightly at each location: a double height ticket hall, faced in Portland stone, with plenty of natural light and the Underground logo throughout.  The designs still exist, practically untouched, today.  Holden also designed the magnificent headquarters for the London Underground at 55 Broadway, above St James's Park station, one of the best office buildings in London and the tallest until the Senate House in Russell Square (another Holden design) was constructed.

I was heading out in the opposite direction from Morden and St James's Park, into North London.  Holden and Pick had toured Europe in 1930 to see the new developments in modernist architecture across the continent, and they came back enthusiastic to bring this new style to the capital.  The extension of the Piccadilly Line to the north and west of the city gave them the perfect opportunity.  In 1932 Holden's first new building in this style, at Sudbury Town, was opened: a vast brick box containing all the passenger facilities.

This was just a practice run for Holden's perfect station: Arnos Grove.  I stepped out of the modern Tube train into a magnificent piece of 1930s design.  You walk up from the platforms and into a brick drum rising high above you.  Great glass windows allow the sunlight to pour in, even on a grey day like when I visited; then, when it's dark, they allow the light inside to glow, a lantern to beckon passengers in.

The passimeter in the centre - now unnecessary, thanks to the UTS gates - acts as a fulcrum to the building, a centrepiece to draw your eye.  You know exactly where to go to get to the trains instinctively, without needing signs.  Around the edge are the services you need - ticket windows, telephone kiosks.  It's magnificent.

I stopped gawping in awe long enough to go outside onto Bowes Road, just another north London high street which the Underground station has fallen into.  From the outside, it's even better.

Again, note how Pick and Holden's principles of simplicity in design make the station so easy to use.  It's a beacon to passers by; it demands your attention.  Brick is the plainest, most British building material there is, and it becomes a virtue here.  Holden's abandoned the Portland stone because, ultimately, it's unnecessary when you can use bricks to such a beautiful effect.  And out front, skewered above the entrance, the glowing red and blue of the Underground bullseye.

I went round to the side, to the car park; Arnos Grove was a pioneer of "park and ride".  The station looks just as great from every angle, carrying its stunning symmetry with grace and style.

Back inside I took a moment to study the display in the passimeter about Holden, his life and his work. It's a small exhibit, but a lovely touch.  As I stood and took photos of the ticket hall, the Underground worker on the gates smiled benignly.  The staff on the Underground have got a bit of a reputation for pouncing on transport nerds with cameras, accusing them of being terrorists and threatening to report them to the police, but I guessed that I wasn't the first to want to photograph Arnos Grove.  On the contrary, I expect he was proud to work in such an iconic building, and glad it was being appreciated.  I know I would be.

I headed back down to the platform.  Holden continued to design for the Underground, and his designs go all the way up to Cockfosters.  He also created buildings for the "Northern Heights" extensions, and for the Central Line expansion into East London.  But the Second World War came along and most of the extensions were called to a halt, then funds were less easy to come by in the austerity years.  He did complete the fantastic Gants Hill station, on the Central Line, which I visited a couple of years ago and which took inspiration from the Moscow Metro.

Holden died in 1960 but you can still find his influence across the whole London Underground.  New architects follow his principles of as much natural light as possible, wide open ticket halls and easy navigation; Buro Happold's Canada Water station on the Jubilee Line is a shameless 21st century version of Arnos Grove, and Ian Ritchie's Wood Lane carries much of the same ideas.  They're ideas that are bizarrely only now being adopted by other railway architects; Liverpool Central's planned rebirth with a glass roof and walls is the stuff Holden did as a matter of course eighty years ago.  He understood that railway stations, especially dark Underground stations, are hubs and need to be built big and proud; they need to glow and inspire.  Public transport becomes a much more pleasurable experience if you feel respected and wanted by the transport providers.

I took the Piccadilly Line down to the mammoth complex at King's Cross St Pancras, a station that's been undergoing building work for years.  Again, it's been opened up and made brighter, with new wide corridors and ticket halls.  Above ground there's a new customer facility being built - a huge glass dome that will let in natural light and accommodate all the shops and restaurants you could possibly want.  It's a fantastic building, and I can't wait to see it when it's finished.

On a smaller scale, the Underground's Northern Ticket Hall, built for easy access to St Pancras domestic passengers, has a bright, unpretentious feel to it.  It would definitely register well with Charles Holden and Frank Pick.

Sometimes you have to pay your respects to someone great.  Sometimes you have to pay homage to someone who has influenced and inspired you.  I had one of those days while I was in London.

If you want to read more about Charles Holden, I recommend David Lawrence's book Bright Underground Spaces, which covers his brilliant knack for architecture in great detail, and includes Holden's actual designs.

Watford Ho!

You know, there used to be a time when the Internet was full of strange, unique things.  You could turn to Google - or perhaps, in Ye Olden Days, Webcrawler - and type in a couple of words and find a fascinating bit of writing about something you'd never heard before.  Probably on GeoCities, with a hot pink background and an "UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!" gif flashing at the bottom.

Nowadays, of course, everything has been done.  Even the most arcane, bizarre sexual practice has its own support group and forum with a thousand users.  There are whole servers devoted to people who collect pictures of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa eating oysters.  There is a Matrix-like virtual world entirely occupied with people who like making papier mache models of car crashes.  It's a whole galaxy of stuff, and nothing you find hasn't been done before.  Except maybe Two Girls, One Cup.  Once was enough for that.

Where I'm going with this is, what you are about to read has been done before.  Robert and Ian have already covered it in great detail.  They were there, and because I went and spent a week with my net-free mother, I came last in the race to write it up.  Go to their blogs; read their accounts; get their versions.  Feel free.  You might have done it already.  But know this: my version has more off-colour gags.

Where this all started was with Robert's birthday.  He was turning 29, and wanted to go to London to celebrate it.  Since I am a soul of generosity and unselfishness I agreed to go to the capital with him.  I'm good like that.  And because Robert is, like me, a bit odd, he wanted to visit an abandoned railway line and take pictures of himself fannying around in front of the old station signs.

We boarded a gleaming, sexy, glamorous Overground train at Euston.  Blimey, they're lovely.  I've said it before, I know, but I'm not someone who gets excited about trains as a rule.  It's hard not to get excited about the shiny white and orange Overground trains though.  From the funky moquette on the seat to the long extended carriage, it was like riding a train from Logan's Run.  It's lucky Robert was only 29, or Jenny Agutter would have whipped him off the train somewhere around South Kenton to head for Sanctuary.

Ian had also joined us at Euston.  Ian actually lives in London, so he's not as excited by orange trains as Robert and I; next to him we were total amateurs.  I think he looked on our naive jolliness with a sort of patrician air.

We were heading almost to the end of the line, to Watford High Street station, right on the fringes of Zone 8.  I was a bit nervous.  I'd never been to Watford before, even though I'd grown up only a couple of junctions up the M1.  To someone from Luton, Watford is the enemy: it's the home of that accursed yellow football team, so you don't cross into their territory.  You stay at home and polish your straw boater.

Here I was though, in the middle of foreign territory, posing in front of an orange sign.  We were actually here in suburban Hertfordshire to find some much older station signs.  In fact we were hunting out station signs that didn't even have a station attached any more, which is probably a first for me.

Our target was the Croxley Green branch, a spur of railway that heads out from the mainline and round the edge of Watford.  It's been dead for years but for some reason, no-one's tidied up after it, and so the remnants of its former existence still cling on here and there.

Out we set, through back streets, following Robert and his iPhone.  Whereas I will just spend my time staring at Ordnance Survey maps, Robert had embraced the 21st century, and programmed the route into Google Maps.  He wandered in front of Ian and I, waving his phone in the air like it was a geiger counter at Sellafield.  We could only follow in his tracks, bemused.

There it was: Vicarage Road.  I'm not a sporty type, and the only thing I like about football is 22 athletic men showering together afterwards, but there's still a primeval, instinctive loathing of Watford Football Club in me.  The Luton/Watford games were always severe grudge matches, ones that have registered in my frontal lobe somewhere and mean that I saw Vicarage Road as the Hertfordshire equivalent of a Nazi gun emplacement.

It also meant that by comparison to Ian and Robert, I was David Coleman.  I was able to tell them about Watford's footballing fortunes, which roughly coincide with Sir Elton John pumping millions into the club: the minute he vanishes, so does the team's prospects.  We were all disappointed that the club's strip didn't reflect its flamboyant former owner.  Yellow and black; how dull.  Where was the diamante?  Where were the feathers?  Why wasn't there a My Partner David Furnish Stand?  I know Elton's got his hands full with his baby at the moment, but come on Watford.  Get onto it.

Just beyond the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road stadium was a bus stop with a poster for John Barrowman's upcoming appearance in the town.  It was at this point I wondered if Watford was a bit too gay for me.

Luckily there were still those train stations to keep us on the straight and narrow.  Watford Stadium Halt was built during those brief seasons when Watford FC was in the top flight; it was British Rail's last ditch attempt to get people to use the line.  We knew where it was, according to the map, but finding any sign of it was extremely difficult.

Somewhere under there, maybe, possibly, is an old railway platform.  I wandered around to see if I could see any further evidence - a Network SouthEast sign, perhaps, or maybe a statue of Sir Elton pointing the way.  Nothing.  Instead I found myself looking at an electricity substation, imagining that this might have once been the route to the platform.

We were starting to get funny looks from a gang of little boys on bikes, so we moved on.  It was a route through pale brick semis and three storey "apartment" blocks; tiny gardens with cars parked on their square of brick paving; cul-de-sacs and cul-de-sacs.  It was utterly tedious.  Somewhere around 1975, house builders lost their imagination.  The experimental constructions of the Sixties seemed to have terrified Barratt and their colleagues and they decided that all future housing estates would be like this.  Close after close twisting round corners, named after a vague theme (in this case, British islands), and completely bland and tedious.  They were boxes for sleeping in, not homes.

We left the 1980s blandathon and found ourselves back on a main road.  And yes, there it was: a railway sign for an abandoned station.

Hello, Watford West.  There was a square of tarmac, a couple of signs, and an archway leading down to the platform.

I loved seeing the old Network SouthEast logos again.  Unlike Robert and Ian, who grew up in Regional Railways land, the red white and blue colours were part of my childhood.  My home station of Leagrave was plastered in them.  Lamp posts and benches were red; the platform shelters were blue, as were the stairs.  The familiar slanting colour blocks were on all the signs.

We were going to phone that number, but we didn't know what the local area code was.  You'd have to put it on there now, so people could use their mobiles to call it.  Along with a number to text for info and a link to your website.

We queued up to get our photos taken with the sign, much to the amusement of passers by.  I was last and, wanting my shot to be different from Robert and Ian's, I got athletic:

As we moved on from the station, I took the opportunity to grill Ian about his music.  As I've written before, Ian is a talented singer-songwriter, whose Come to Metro-land album is a favourite on my iPod.  I'd listened to its Saint Etienne, Modern Life is Rubbish, character filled music on the train down, and I was bursting with questions about the lyrics.  Sadly, he told me that my theory that By Accident or Design was about a relationship failing under the pressure of a girl's cocaine addiction ("I portioned blame on your allergies/And got a face full of snow") was interesting but completely wrong.

More pertinently, I quizzed him about Croxley Green.  Here we were, headed for the station of that name, and I was with someone who'd actually written a song about it.  It was like going to Waterloo Bridge with Ray Davies.  Once again, I was disappointed.  Turns out Ian had never watched coal trains pass at Croxley Green while wrapped in an eiderdown.  It was all fiction.  Well, it was a mix of truth and fiction.  This is why you shouldn't meet your heroes, kids.

We found something exciting round the back of a Premier Inn: actual track.  We scrambled up the bank so we could each take a snap of the rusting rails.  A train hasn't passed over them for twenty years, but like the station signs, it's more bother to remove them.

One day this little spur might make a comeback.  There is a plan for it to link into the Metropolitan Line, giving it a link to the main-line at Watford Junction.  Watford station, on the Met, is in a quiet back street, nowhere near the town itself - it'll be closed, and this new line will come into play.

It's a plan that came into existence the second the line closed, with Hertfordshire County Council doing much of the driving.  Which is part of the problem, of course: we're not in TfL territory here, we're in the shires, so the plans had to satisfy two masters.

There's that expensive viaduct to build, you see.  It's their own fault.  Back in the 90s, when the line was in its death throes, a bypass was built right across the track.  Any hope of it ever being reopened was dashed there and then.

What ridiculous lampposts.

We were reaching the end of our trek.  Watford was left behind us and we entered the village of Croxley Green itself.  I got Ian to pose in front of the village sign to commemorate his arrival.  He refused to sing though.

It seemed we had arrived at a propitious moment.  Croxley Green was in the grip of an entertainment event like no other: Croxfest!.  The village had temporarily turned into Glastonbury, it seemed, if Glastonbury featured tribute acts knocking out their version of Light My Fire on a school field.  The streets were deserted as the locals flocked - FLOCKED - to the entertainments.  I tried to persuade Ian that he should attend, and perhaps give them an acapella performance of his ode to their home town; he rightly pointed out that there was no chance we'd get in.  Tickets to that sort of thing sell out months in advance, and we didn't want to be at the mercy of touts.

Disappointed, we pressed on to Croxley Green station itself.  You don't just get a station sign here: you get a notice board as well.  It was like Christmas.  It would have been even more exciting if there'd been some ancient adverts for a One-Day Travelcard or "We're Getting There".

Nature has taken over the station completely.  It's almost frightening, seeing how dominant the trees and bushes have become in such a short period of time.  It was a reminder that if you don't cut your grass, eventually it'll take over your house and then come for your soul.

I did consider scrambling over the fence to get a closer look at the station remains.  Unfortunately, I suffered an injury: a stinging nettle got my arm, so obviously I couldn't risk it in my compromised state.

Instead we took a triple up the nose shot.

After a pleasant lunch in a quiet pub (obviously Croxfest! had taken all their customers) it was back onto the Underground for the journey into London.

I couldn't hold it in any more.  I had to confess to Robert and Ian.  I don't particularly like the Metropolitan Line.  Yes, I know it's the ur-Tube line, the one that paved the way for metros across the world.  Yes, I know it's the line that effectively created suburbia.  Yes, I know that it's inspired odes from John Betjeman.

I just don't like it very much.  I don't like the rusty purple of its line colour.  I don't like its rattling old trains.  I don't like that it barely goes underground.  I want my Tube lines to be deep level, burrowing beneath the city streets, taking you from station to station in an almost mystical way.  The Metropolitan is too much like a railway to me.  It doesn't have that same magic.

Robert and Ian were, naturally, shocked.  And I don't blame them.  The London Underground is a thing of beauty - admitting you don't like one of the lines is like saying you don't like one of your children.  You should love all of them equally.  I sort of dislike myself for it.

I will say this for the Met: it was nice and quiet that afternoon.  We spread ourselves over the carriage to recover, all of us strangely tired.  Collecting stations can be hard work sometimes.  It's better when you have good company, though.

All Change

Honestly, I go away for a week and Merseyrail goes mad.  First of all, the good news: £40 million to upgrade the underground stations, including £20 million just for Liverpool Central.  It's about time, let's be honest: there has been diddling around the edges for years, with the MtoGo and new floors, but Central needs a lot of work.  The Northern Line's island platform is grossly unsuitable, and quite scary on a Saturday afternoon.

We're also going to get a new look ticket hall, with a glass roof and walls.  This will help it to tie in with the under construction Central Village scheme.  There will be a direct link into the station from the new development, so it makes sense to get it done while there's building work all around.  Hopefully they'll build a little roof for the lift access, so disabled people don't have to get rained on every time they come up from the platforms.

The downside is that Central's going to be closed for four months over next summer to accommodate the works.  That's a bit of a nightmare for commuters and shoppers alike, who'll presumably be either made to use Moorfields or who'll wrestle with replacement buses.  Just keep telling yourself: it'll all be worth it in the end.  (Of course, if they built my fantasy station at Chinatown, this wouldn't be such a problem, but unfortunately Merseytravel don't have access to the imaginary worlds in my head).

When the Gods give, they also take away, and so we're also going to have to bid farewell to my CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND Bart Schmeink.  Bart is leaving Merseyrail to go and run GVB, the Amsterdam transport network.  It means that he's going to be around if and when the Noord/Zuid Lijn gets opened in the city, the lucky bugger.

Obviously I'm distressed by this news.  Not only because he's done a damn good job in his four years at the head of Merseyrail.  He's a really nice guy who's embraced Liverpool life and been a part of the city, not just a faceless businessman.  I had the good chance to meet him earlier this year, and he was charming and funny, and not at all scared by my disturbing blog obsession with him and his railway network.  I'd have run a mile, personally.

Bart doesn't leave until the 1st of December, so we've time to have a whip round.  I'm hopeful that his replacement will be another nice Dutchman with a brilliant name.  And that he'll give me a free Railpass.