Call me weird (voice off: "You're weird") but I find a pleasing symmetry when several trains line up in a pattern. This happens in particular at Rayners Lane from time to time when there is a Piccadilly train in the siding and one just leaving the westbound platform whilst one is coming in to the eastbound. Sometimes all three line up perfectly, with the rear carriage of the departing train parallel to the front of the other two. Now for me to observe this means I must be on the eastbound platform, so I must have caught a Met line and disembarked. This rules out 50% of journeys. There has to be a train in the siding - this rules perhaps 50% of the remaining possibilities. And then there must be a Piccadilly through train going west rather than another one waiting to turn round at Rayners Lane, plus one coming through (the one that I will catch). All of which makes the triple alignment rather rare and all the more enjoyable when it does happen.
Today there was an even rarer sight - three trains in echelon. There was one going west, one in the sidings and one coming east but they halted the eastbound to let the one in the sidings go first (because yet another Picc was queued up waiting to come in to the westbound platform and could not approach until the siding was clear). So for a second we had the front of the westbound train in line with the front of the train in the sidings, and the front of the eastbound train in line with the last carriage of the train in the sidings. 18 carriages stretching from the platforms to the distant bridge where Cannon Lane crosses the tracks.
Well, I enjoyed it anyway. I told you I was weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment