Back on the Met

 I last took a London Underground train in the first week of March, 2020. The growing fears about the Covid epidemic convinced me to stay away, well before the first official lockdown. Today I finally ventured back with a short trip on the Metropolitan to Finchley Road (and a return via the Jubilee from Swiss Cottage).

It felt good to be riding the rails again and somewhat disconcerting, too. Most of my fellow passengers wore masks but several hold-outs sat defiantly with mouths and noses exposed. Coming back, I was struck by the number who propped a bag in the adjacent seat, as if to ward off those thinking of sitting next to them. The technique here is to avoid all eye contact with anyone who looks wistfully at the seat on the grounds that most people are far too polite to ask for the bag to be put where it belongs, on the floor.

The journeys themselves were not remarkable, although the Met on the return was held several times for a few minutes; we were very close behind another and they might have been "regulating" the system as they used to call it. There were no announcements about covid precautions, no station assistants were to be seen and, of course, nobody was enforcing the wearing of masks although this is a legal requirement under London Transport's own by-laws. We used to get loads of announcements about not smoking, standing behind yellow lines, keeping one's property with one, all that sort of thing, so it was strange to have a peaceful journey.

I also noticed that some of the signals on the Chiltern Line northbound out of Harrow were covered up. These tracks are also used by some Met services (indeed, a fast Chesham was due in according to my tube app) so it seems that the Automatic Train Operating system, promised for God-knows how many years, may be in force on that section. This system has been running well on the Jubilee for quite a while and it should mean that Mets can go faster. It has been a long time since I used to get hurled around in the swaying carriage of the old A stock belting up from Neasden at 60mph plus; it will be fun if they can push the S stock trains to their full potential over that section.