Of London Trains.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 12, 16 September 1908, Page 53

Of London Trains.

By

“PIERROT."

After its police, the railways of London are its greatest marvel. That was brought before me as I watched four great trains passing side by side and in one direction through the wide-tracked station at Spa-road. And I was only looking at one small inlet for the mighty traffic of London! Simultaneously trains were hastening abreast like these from the north, from the east, from the west; this was one little stream feeding the river from the south—a detail in the vast, ceaseless procession of unnumbered trains—making for the great London termini. No one can ever learn proportionately much of London trains —few will ever know half of the three or four hundred railway stations to which they run. It is wiser, as with so many other matters of knowledge, to be content with a little- perhaps it is even better, like a man overburdened with a long journey, to fare from, stage to stage. “Tube” maps are published that tell you how each of seven or eight underground lines meet here and there in the depths below, and how from one you can reach the other. But the study is a weariness, and soon you would' rather ask your way. You sink down in the brightly-lighted lifts, knowing that you will get there, but hardly how the journey will be accomplished. Or, perhaps, in cowardice you prefer a reeking motor-’bus, which is at least well labelled for its destination. All the local trains of London are now electric; and the newer Gower-street is certainly an improvement on the asphyxiating horror of the old. Perhaps in some respects the trains are in advance of the times. I am thinking of the compressed air arrangement by which the doors suue to as the train leaves a station. On one occasion a late but unfortunate traveller jumped on just as the doors were closing, and was held fast by the neck, head in the carriage and body without. Luckily the machinery was held in cheek and the rest of the decapitating process was suspended. But that is why I say that there are some innovations for which the world is not quite prepared! The astonishing thing on the contra side of criticism is the paucity of trains by night. The night-worker is obliged to live near his work, unless he happens to live in the region of Epping Forest, or somewhere beyond the East End of London. To tens of thousands of people this is a real hardship, which is only remediable by a service of occasional trains through the night. At present there is generally nothing between about half-an-hour after midnight and five in the morning—so that unless a man is prepared to await the awakening of the birds and the coming of day, he cannot hope to reach a slightly distant home within hours of leaving work. Here, surely, is room for great, improvement. Hut generally one is not disposed to criticize an organisation so vast and imposing, and so thorough. Whatever station you enter—on the surface or deep down beneath the pavements—the marvel is how little time there is to wait before you are speeding on your way to your destination. Three minutes’ waits soon become a ground for complaint rather than a matter for self-congratulation that they are not longer; and the only ground for absolute contentment is when you reach the platform simultaneously with your train. Wonderful the net-work of the mighty system! Wonderful the way line crosses line above and below and below again; wonderful the brilliant, book-stalled busy stations a hundred feet below the, streets; wonderful the bright subways and approaches to the stations of three different lines from that of one! 1 like to picture an unitque Boman visiting in spirit a scene that would so greatly have

appealed to the inutter-of-ibet practicalness that was in him. He was* not of those who would have seen “ degeneracy ” in these aggregations of often despised ingenuities. He would have fitted sueh things,as so many of us try to do, into the general scheme of his Utopia. The only difference is that we, used to incessant improvement, and discontented always with the present, dream of far greater things to come. What will the gyrostatic mono-rail do for London? Will Brighton be a near suburb, and Bournemouth the later Brighton. Will Charing Cross be within one minute of London Bridge, and shall we think less of getting to Chelsea than of walking across Waterloo Bridge? Perhaps even Mr. Brennan could not tell us this, but the possibilities, on the showing of those best able to judge, appear to be practically unlimited. Like the prophets of old, he has retired into solitude to mature his ideas. Perhaps he will return to his kind to remodel London, to remodel the world! And I am not alone in thinking that we. may be at the birth of an era as definitely associated with the name of Brennan as the immediately past epoch of motor power was associated with that of Stephenson. When I left London seven years ago, anyone who had said that every local train in the metropolis would be run by electricity in seven years’ time would have been thought a sanguine ass. Yet the fact is here, and how much greater things may not the next seven years bring forth? One is, however, not always a Utopian in London. ■ Indeed, the vastness of its evils on a scale with the vastness of its excellencies makes the mood rather rarer than in smaller cities. These unceasing trains, burrowing, climbing, crossing one another at a hundred points seem to one humour as purposeless and ridiculous as to another they seem to be serving some vast socialising aim. There is something inchoate, chaotic, senseless in this whirl of black figures tearing in and out of trains, falling and rising in great lifts, surrendtering innumerable tickets, and tumbling down steps into thieklypeopled streets. We feel like the naturalist amidst casual heaps of specimens. We want to classify and average and understand them. We want to know to what the great machine is tending. Are these myriads merely helping us forward, is the machine itself going forward, are We merely substituting terms in our equation? I don’t know, you don’t know, and it is certainly not the business of the railway companies to know. AU that we ask of them is that the signals on yonder great bridge of semaphores shall work well and truly, that the trains shall run to time, that the cushions shall be a little more abundant and a little cleaner, and that we shall have smart and civil porters. The nature oi the freight, living and dead, its collective destination, its sound import is no more its business than that of the steam in its engines. The machine of London railways is vastly imposing, but may be anything or nothing else. I am content to be impressed.