The London Tube

The London Tube
Always Remember: Mind the Gap

AT THE TUBE STATIONS—When you put your Travelcard through the machine that lets you pass through, the doors open with a slam, and they shut with a slam. When there’s a crowd, this makes for a lot of crashing, slamming noise, almost to the point that you don’t hear anything else. But you also hear disembodied, echoing voices telling you things like “Please have your cards ready,” and talking about any delays or keeping track of your possessions. And “Mind the Gap” is indeed important when you get to the platform. Sometimes the voice says, “Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

NOISE-- Sometimes there’s little point of trying to converse because of the noise in London. If we’re walking on the sidewalk, our voices are drowned out by the traffic (except at, say, one in the morning). If we’re walking along a subway tunnel, the many clopping feet and the disembodied and echoing voices drown our voices out. If we’re standing or sitting on an underground train, it is rattling away loudly, rattle, rattle, and rattle, not to mention shaking.

Standing on the platform and waiting for the subway train, we’ll hear it roaring before we can see it. I like to look at the entrance of the tunnel, and soon I see two lights, from the two glowing white/yellow lights at the front of the train—they’re like eyes. And the train approaches, with those glowing eyes, roaring away, moving swiftly like a dragon emerging from its cave. It gradually slows down, as many riders and many passengers go past, and when it stops, there’s a half second when it just sits there and you anxiously wait for the doors to open, then finally the doors open and you step on at the closest door, no matter how crowded the car is, no matter how many people are already standing in that particular car.
Sweating bodies are pressed against each other … that’s rush hour on a London Underground train.


Tube Station Details

You know you’re getting closer to the Tube station if you see this in the distance: a square white Tube sign with the red circle and the blue line across the center. And these signs are on black iron poles, and a black iron railing goes around the staircase entrance descending into the Tube station. (Actually, this city has lots of black wrought iron fences and gates just in general—you have the street, then the sidewalk, then a black fence, and then steps or bushes or another sidewalk or walkway, or if you’re lucky there’s a garden or grass on the other side of the fence.)

The Regents Park Station and at least one other station have a pair of huge elevators (or lifts, if you prefer) onto which you step, and they have doors on either side of the elevator (reminiscent of the O’Hare Airport that I remember from my childhood—I have to say it is totally unrecognizable now). If there are lots of people waiting for the lift, when the doors open, a herd all together steps forward onto the lift and fills it up. Sometimes, before the herd moves on, and after the door has opened, you see the back of many people stepping off the lift through the other doors. That’s quite weird looking. And as long as the doors are open, you hear a continual, slow, short BEEP BEEP BEEP similar to the sound large vehicles make while they’re backing up. (For that matter, when double-decker buses stop at a bus terminal they also make a high-pitched squeal that’s painful to the ears.)

The walls/ceiling of the tunnels and platforms of Tube stations form a semicircle, with the exception of a few—there was one we went to today—I think Blackfriars—where there are platforms in the sides and center and a flat grey, ridged metal ceiling, making it look I suppose more modern than the other stations. Less Art Deco.

Both Waterloo Station and Grand Portland Street Station involve going inside a building—for Waterloo at least it’s a regular train station also, dating to the Victorian era (and what a regal, elaborate façade it has, with a giant eagle in the sky), not only for subway trains, it has shops inside. You take a walkway to South Bank (following signs is important in Tube stations), and when you step out of Waterloo Station you end up on a clanking metal bridge and you walk down a somewhat spiral metal staircase (as in a grey filigree sort of metal) that seems lightweight and that goes clang, clang, clang as you step down it.

Another interesting detail (or boring and trivial, depending on how you look at it) is the phrase “way out.” It is in bright yellow letters over an arrow at the Tube stations, painted overhead on the walls, like overhead breadcrumbs leading you to the correct exit; it also appears in glowing digital yellow lights on black signs. But it is also in other places, not just the Underground. For instance, the National Gallery contains exit signs over doors saying “Way Out” or “Way Out / Trafalgar Square.” At the Transport Museum, my sister pointed out that another meaning for “way out” is there’s always a way out, no matter what situation you’re in; it’s ironic that she of all people would come up with that idea--someone who, for instance, acted like it’s the end of the world when we wandered the streets of London during the Tube strike. Before she said that, I had jokingly said, “Way out, dude.”

The Tube and Advertisements

Underpasses and Tube passageways contain poster ads all along the walls—and not only for stuff like cars and wine and clothing and hotels, but also for books (such as, for instance, Old Flame Smoldering I think was the title) and for plays at theatres in London, such as The Woman in White, a musical that opens in August, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and starring Michael Crawford. Even when you’re going up one of these big long escalators, the posters are also going up, and sometimes they’re connected in theme, or some of them are, like every other poster is part of a series. Three posters for the London Aquarium caught my attention: the first showed a big orange fish and the caption “Where could he be?” At least one unrelated ad followed this, and then the next showed a bunch of little silvery fish with the caption, “I saw him over there!” and the last is a picture of a clown fish with the caption, “Here’s the clown fish!” Also, when you’re on a platform, facing you are huge posters attached to the walls, like in Neverwhere, and they also advertise things like stores, wine, books—such as Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country? describing him as the “capped crusader.” Also, you see more posters on the wall behind you where you’re standing on the platform, and some of these posters—as is the same with the passageways—actually shift, making a mechanized rumbling sound, so that there are at least two different ads in the same frame.

Go to a Tube station at an unpopular hour, and the only sound will be that mechanical rumbling noise. Benches and vending machines, such as Coca Cola or Cadbury chocolate vending machines, stand against the wall on the subway platforms. The benches are usually silver-colored metal.Inside the trains themselves are displayed a string of long, rectangular ads up above the windows, not to mention up above the Tube maps over the windows (the latter only cover the route of the particular train that you’re on). Ads are for cell phones (mobile phones, rather), newspapers, books, job hunting, career counseling, juice, etc. Art and the London Underground1)

Poetry

Among the ads along the top edge inside the trains, sometimes you notice “Poetry On the Underground;” a poem followed by the author’s name. Also—I believe it was on the orange walls of the underpass below Waterloo Bridge, or on the South Bank just south of Waterloo Bridge—a beautiful poem was painted on in simple stenciled letters and followed by the author’s name—unfortunately, we hurried by and I neither wrote nor remembered her name. The poem was very appropriate, mentioning darkness and maybe a tunnel.

Paint and Mosaics

The Tottenham Court Road Station is beautifully decorated in rainbow colors, with little one inch square porcelain tiles creating the mosaics. This is on the platform walls and the tunnels. Marble Arch Station: Tiles (of the usual size, about 4” square) have an arch design painted on, blue and white coloring. Baker St.: Yellow and brown, maybe also red and green tiles with the typical Sherlock Holmes silhouettes centered in the tiles, over and over, hundreds of little Sherlock Holmes silhouettes. Regency Park: Colors of tiles—white, brown, and orange. “Regents Park” in brown letters, elegant stenciled style reminiscent of nineteenth century lettering. Charing Cross: predominantly black and white versions of famous paintings are painted on the walls, because of the National Portrait Gallery. Includes Shakespeare (along with a quote in calligraphy, beginning with the phrase “Dear Reader”) and of Lord Byron and Napoleon, etc—rather appropriate, since when you come up above ground there’s a memorial to Wellington. Another station has diagonal green strips painted on the tiles, with abstract little people sticking up out of them—this may have been Great Portland Street—no, no, more likely a location with a particularly long escalator. Maybe it was Trafalgar Square. Great Portland Street and one other station had blonde brick with archways creating little alcoves all along the platform—reminiscent of a Victorian train station or sewer.


Music

Musicians and singers, usually one though sometimes a pair, performing music—often it’s something by a famous group or songwriter. All the performers we saw were male, and a bunch played the guitar. One of the guitarists had long dark hair and big pretty eyes. Another sang and played Radiohead’s song “Creep” on a guitar. A pair of musicians performed something by Simon and Garfunkel.