Posterous theme by Cory Watilo as adapted by Jamie Graham

Monday morning train porn II

written on Monday 11 July 2011 and filed under [british rail] [porn] [trains]

It's 1970 and Waterloo station is grubby and dark-looking and allows the free-flow of people. Thank heavens Railtrack/Network Rail improved it, so it's now bright and shiny and makes sure that when it's busy there's a serious risk of people being crushed to death against the retail booths carelessly dribbled across the concourse! Ah, progress.

Also, it's 1970 and thus five years since British Rail introduced "Rail Blue" livery for the trains. As you can see, a good half of the slam-door Southern region deathtraps are still in Southern Railway green. Nowadays, thanks to vinyl wraps, we can relivery trains as they pass from franchise to franchise to franchise in a never-ending, dizzying merry-go-round of our money in only a few hours. We just don't bother very often. I've been on a Northern Spirit painted, Arriva Trains Northern debranded, Northern Rail over-branded West Yorkshire PTE-financed train with Intercity 'No Smoking' stickers in the windows and default Regional Railways North East posters quite recently; what the ordinary passenger is meant to make of this thrusting display of deck-chair rearranging by successive incompetent governments is anybody's guess.

Give me relentlessly blue trains any day: they make it look like a railway, not a political football being passed around homophobes and various European state railways.