Tube watch (8)Bow Road station update They're spending lots of money doing up the Underground. You can tell this because every weekend they shut down half of the network. Last weekend you couldn't travel anywhere up the eastern end of the Central line, this weekend Wembley Park is (again) a no-go zone, and the following weekend the entire middle chunk of the District line will be out of action one more time. You have to check where you're going very carefully these days in case what should be a quick tube trip turns into a bus replacement nightmare. Then there are tens of stations being closed for months, for part of the day at least, so that workmen can erect big blue hoardings and then pretend to deepclean the walls behind. I actually saw some of these workmen at Bow Road yesterday, during the rush hour no less, which was something of a revelation because I had thought that workmen at Bow Road were imaginary creatures like leprechauns or something. There are two big doorways in the front of the station building, one of which never ever opens. Until last night. Through the autumn gloom I saw a long secret room bathed in golden light, packed with orange-coated men in clean white helmets. There were at least four of them anyway, either busy renovating this space no travelling passenger ever uses or standing around in cryogenic storage until this whole sorry modernisation illusion is finally over. To give them their due these mystical workmen have somehow managed, over the last nine months, to paint half the ceiling, hang some lights and plug in some new cameras. But not a lot else. If this is where the government's hard-earned tube subsidy is going then I'd rather they'd left the old station as it was - rundown, functional, and 100% open.
Tube watch (8) Bow Road station update
