I cannot figure out how to get down from Balham southbound. The train is leaving, I do not have time to get a ticket but I get on the train anyway.
Read moreIt takes me down to Charing Cross.
Trying to get somewhere not sure where. Then I switch. The map is missing many of the lines and what lines remains are twisted around each other. Ealing Broadway no longer has a Central line, instead it has some others, a bit of the green of the District, and some purple, some dark red, twisted like thick wire cables.
So I change to get onto the District line. I figure I can get off at Ealing Common if necessary; even though the journey has many stops and I am at the other end of the line.
Once on, the map is also missing many stations. The train speeds through, not stopping at all. It speeds past Ealing Broadway, until the next stop, where it comes to a halt before it reaches the platform.
The doors open but nobody can get off until it advances some more.
The driver gets out and a station master comes over to see what is wrong. They examine a gold junction box at the front of the train. It has squirrels in it.
“That is preventing the train from moving forward,” he says.
He screwdrivers the box open and prizes one, then two grey baby squirrels from the box. Then a sparrow flaps out. It ducks out of reach then flies in through the open doors of the first carriage.
The bird panics and tries once more to escape. But the automatic doors close on it, they almost trap it, before the bird gets loose. Once the doors detect the block.
How is it that the sensors are that good? I think, before the bird escapes.
Photo by Vmenkov via Wikimedia Commons
