Last year at Christmas we provided new words with a theme of transport in London to the song of the Lord High Executioner.
In recognition that, as far as we are concerned, the word of the year is not “selfie” but “crayonista” – and why crayonista and not crayonisto you may ask? – here are the London Reconnections alternative words to Noël Coward’s song entitled “Mrs Worthington”. In case you haven’t been closely following our site through the year, a crayonista is someone who proposes rail schemes and seems to base their plans on a map or even a diagram and a set of crayons that they play with.
In an introduction to the song Noël Coward stated that
Some years ago when I was returning from the Far East on a very large ship, I was pursued around the decks every day by a very large lady. She showed me some photographs of her daughter – a repellant-looking girl and seemed convinced that she was destined for a great stage career. Finally, in sheer self-preservation, I locked myself in my cabin and wrote this song – “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs. Worthington”
The song in one sense was the least successful ever. It was written to put off the Mrs Worthingtons of this world from writing to Noël Coward asking him to get their daughter on the stage. Inevitably the opposite happened.
The song is also noticeable for falling foul of the Lord Chamberlain’s regulations at the time. The final verse was considered as beyond redemption and it was many decades later before the words were sung in public.
Here is a later version as sung by the master himself but without the final verse.
And this is probably one of the best modern takes currently available. It includes the final verse and the singer, Fenton Gray, performs it with the true venom that the song deserves.
So, totally not in the spirit of Christmas, and with the assured knowledge that these words will be every bit as successful as the original ones from Noël Coward were, here is the LR alternative.
Don’t put your rail plans on our site, Crayonista Man,
don’t put your rail plans on our site.
The comments are overcrowded with these wild and fancy schemes
And while sincerely advanced they don’t stand a chance
And must remain just dreams.
There are planners with access to the required facts
To plan the schemes our city lacks and put things all to rights
I repeat Crayonista Man, dear Crayonista Man
Don’t put your rail plans on our site.Regarding plans, dear Crayonista Man,
Of Wednesday the 23rd
Although your tube line looks fine and your intentions are sincere
How can I make it clear this is not a good idea
The gradients and tight turns appear, Crayonista Man
to make the whole thing quite absurd.
The impracticality shows in reality it’s lacking in sense and any pretence
of the real world isn’t there.Don’t put your rail plans on our site, Crayonista Man,
don’t put your rail plans on our site.
The number of level crossings means it will never be approved,
The cost of the scheme means it must stay a dream
Unless substantially improved.
Its a bold scheme and though its full of good intent
its faults are really evident and its hard to stay polite.
So, please Crayonista Man, refrain, I am sure you can, and
don’t put your rail plans on our site.Don’t put your rail plans on our site, Crayonista Man,
don’t put your rail plans on our site.
The scale of the required destruction means we lose what we hold dear
The Festival Halls and even St Pauls would have to disappear.
Its a wild plan and though it solves our transport woes
Its not a thing sane men propose and for London isn’t right
So please, Crayonista Man, forget your destructive plan
And don’t put your rail plans on our site.Don’t put your rail plans on our site, Crayonista Man,
don’t put your rail plans on our site.
Your thoughts are completely bonkers and your plans are much the same
If torn to shreds it has to be said you’ve got yourself to blame
Its a mad plan in the realms of fantasy
I assure you it will never be seen in a good light
So please Crayonista Man, disappear if you possibly can
And don’t put your rail plans on our site.
As last year, you are welcome to suggest additions and alterations but it must have the necessary rhyming couplets and must scan correctly. As it is Christmas you can mention the Waterloo & City Line as much as you like.
Finally, we have Graham Feakins to thank for alerting us to an interesting round trip freight working from North Pole Depot.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and we look forward to reading your comments next year – even those of your fantasy rail schemes.
From today’s Independent:
“A surge in the number of people buying adult colouring books has threatened pencil stocks world-wide as manufacturers struggle to cope with an increased demand for quality crayons.
The world’s biggest wooden pencil manufacturer, Faber-Castell, say they are experiencing “double-digit growth” in the sale of artists’ pencils and have been forced to run more shifts in their German factory to keep up.”
Says it all,really. Timbeau to note the reference to Polychromos!
Link: Here
A spokesman for Faber-Castell almost said ,’ If all the coloured pencils we made were laid end to end, they would stretch from Waterloo to Bank.’
Another spokesperson almost said “We were extremely grateful to London Reconnections for the original publicity given to the the use of coloured pencils. However, mentions did drop off after that, despite Graham H trying his best to earn his stipend by regular allusions to our products whenever serious debate tailed off in your comments forum.”
I thought that GH relied on his Fabled Castell Polychromos…
Re Milton,
Graham probably thought there weren’t enough accurate colours left so he secretly upgraded to the Caran D’ache 400 chest (only available to collect from the factory but laid end to end would be longer than a W&C train!)…
@ answer=42. Surely they stretched from the end of the W&C at Bank to Moorgate, where it is easy to connect up to the Northern City (… to be continued in LR Magazine issue 94)
In defence of crayonism, I do sometimes get urges to play join the dots sometimes but then wonder why joining those dots isn’t a priority, while joining other dots is. My knowledge is limited, just like anyone else’s, but the wisdom of crowds can be utilised. To that end, the crayoning is merely the beginning, and the scepticism that will be forthcoming should be welcomed. What is slightly annoying is that people tend to have the same ideas and not research them properly. But what is bad is not listening to that wisdom, failing to reconsider once you’ve been told why your plan won’t be a priority, and setting up your own campaign website, etc.
For example, I’m curious as to why the W&C isn’t physically linked to other lines, particularly the Central Line at Bank, as doing so would appear to at least overcome depot capacity problems on the W&C, enable 1992 W&C stock to be maintained centralised with the similar 1992 Central Line stock and prevent having to crane in and out carriages at Waterloo, this could be achieved with only a little bit of digging and resignalling work, and you’re going to have men digging at Bank anyway for the upgrade there.
DPWH: My moderator’s finger twitched when I saw mention of the W&C (whose extension, as you may know, has been proposed and then rubbished here so frequently that it has become a tabu topic). But as far as I know, a stock-exchange link such as you propose is new, at least since I’ve been moderating, so your message escaped. (Plus the crafty way you frame it as an analysis of crayonism!).
To make a start on the scepticism (and with no claims to wisdom), I suspect that the digging required may be a little longer than the crayons claimed, what with obstructions and level differences if any. (I should add that, whatever the crayons think, points half-way along the westbound Central Line platform may not be issue-free!). Throw in a need to close the Central Line and W&C lines for a period (which would have to be at a different time from the Northern Line closure). No direct passenger benefits (unless it’s the only, or cheapest, way of augmenting the trains). And apparently crane hire is “cheap”.
(I recommend Andrew Godwin’s 3-D viewer for anyone intrigued by the idea).
@DPWH
Remember that for the first 96 years of its existence the W&C was not part of the Underground, (and used a different electrical system – two actually) and for most of that time it was able to move rolling stock in and out using the lift, until that was swept away to make way for the Eurostar terminal (remember that?)
Some of the proposals for extending the Aldwych branch involved tying in to the Drain – some even sharing the station at Waterloo.
There’s this fascination with making better use of that which exists which is almost always more trouble than it’s worth. Green or brownfield is much easier than trying to do stuff with assets that are working (says he who’s experienced the pain by having had a kitchen and two bathrooms refurbished in the last year).
I strongly suspect that history might show that reusing the Connaught tunnel cost a lot more than was planned.
I could go on and on about engineering and transport awfulness of the line that connects SWT’s main terminus with the main financial district, but note the prohibition
All the argument about the unmentionable line boil down to: it is quite effective at what it was built for: and it will not do that as well if you try to get it to do something – anything – else as well.
timbeau: doubtless true. But the suggestion (this time) was not to get it to do something else, it was to help it in doing what it was built for. (I am mainly saying this to justify my probably-wrong decision to deviate from standard policy, by not chopping this conversation off at the roots before it started growing like bindweed).
@DPWH:
Why not connect
[Snip! More bindweed. This has got to stop! Malcolm & LBM]
Malcom
Chopping Bindweed of at the roots merely stimulates it – you either have to dig all of it up, or poison it (As an allotment-holder, I’m painfully aware of this )
Now, are you (Malcom) therefore proposing to dig into the W&C ……………arrrrgh!
[Greg, you are absolutely right about this. Therefore I am deleting this comment in its entirety. You are not reading this. 🙂 ]
I am sorry, truly sorry, that what was intended as a light hearted reference to crayons has reignited the totally and utterly futile and irrational discussion on colouring-in one particular line and even led to a defence of crayonism. Whatever next? BoatyMacBoatface to all those who think it’s a sensible thing!
I’m looking forward to a behind-the-scenes article from the moderators about all the things they have snipped. It could be called 50 Shades of Teal…
@Greg: What’s a good poison for bindweed? If it works for Crayonista’s too that’s always a bonus….
SH(LR)
“Glyphosate” – carefully & selectively sprayed on to the leaves & especially the growing tip.
Really does the trick & is circulated down to the roots, thus “offing” the convolvulus completely.
@moosealot
Teal seems a bit exotic. I doubt the average crayonista’s set amounts to more than 12, and those probably don’t even come in a proper tin…
Anyway, for bold and really creative schemes we ought to use coloured chalk and one of those big rulers.
@Nameless
“Teal seems a bit exotic”
On the contrary, Croyonistas seem to have an inexhaustible supply of that colour.
“I doubt the average crayonista’s set amounts to more than 12, ”
With the arrival of TfL Rail you need thirteen (one of which is teal) just to draw the existing Tube map.
But that would imply that the average crayonista was in possession of everything relevant and necessary before commencing crayonistalling. Evidence seen on LR and elsewhere seems to indicate precisely the reverse. Hence:
One colour short of a palette
One moquette short of a swatch
etc.
An Offshore company has been registered in the Bahamas by Mossack Fonseca which will enable crayonistas to remain anonymous and even to hide references to unmentionable line extensions from the International Band of Moderators. There may even be tax advantages in this arrangement. Dividends will be payable in Faber-Castell products.
@Fandroid
Indeed, virtual offshore Crayonistas. Just what we need…
@Fandroid
It’s absolutely fine for people to store their crayons in Panama. They can bore themselves and others rigid attempting to draw extensions of the Panama Canal. But if they want to bring the crayons back to London they will be taxed. At 100%.
What is bothersome are people interested in finding out what was historically proposed as far as rail schemes are concerned and simply asking questions being lumped with the Crayonista label by those too lazy to answer their queries or at least recommend sites / books / etc (especially by those who should know better and be willing to impart their wisdom to newcomers), as opposed to those who suggest various tube / rail schemes without taking reality or money into consideration.
If such knowledge was more widely disseminated across the web instead of hidden in books, PDFs and private forums then there would do much to curb the Crayonistas or at least make a distinction between between the former and those wanting to know what was considered, plus the potential impact (and resultant butterfly effect) had such schemes been realized.
@Bill – I think you will find that people here are only too willing to showcase their historical knowledge – sometimes perhaps a little too eager. Your average crayonista is not, however, driven by a thirst for historical analysis but in the potential glory of being the first to have invented the Aldwych-Dover Line; I notice that Another Place has set up a special thread for such folk and I also notice that those who post there such questions as! what if the Line X had been built differently”, are left unanswered – as indeed the question is unanswerable.
@Graham Hewett – Agree as am grateful to those who have been helpful in providing knowledge or at least referencing and linking to material that would prove to be very useful in both giving answers and helping to bring newcomers up to speed.
Nothing changes the reality that the Underground and rail in London have already evolved the way it has, limitations and all. Still it is always worth looking into what-might-have-been at least in theoretical terms.
@Bill – in the nicest possible way, I tend to think that your last sentence is, in fact, the antithesis of planning. No doubt, extending the Drain to the Porte de Vanves is theoretically possible, but to what end? Good planning – if it isn’t to be laughed out of court – should start with the identification of a problem to be solved, followed closely by some reflexion on costs and benefits of possible solutions. That is the inverse approach of your average crayonista who sees some unjoined branches or a white space on a map and immediately wants to fill the gap. That way lies perdition and. in the real world, an early encounter with a blighter like me at TfL/DfT/ Treasury who whose first question would be “why are we bothering with this?”.
@Graham Hewett – To clarify, meant in terms of the historical rail schemes originally considered in London as opposed to the outlandish ideas you have cited. Admittingly more counterfactual or alternate history as opposed to anything practical and viable to be sent to TfL/DfT/Treasury let alone made into a social media generated petition for parliament.
Am aware that today’s planners approach modern schemes in terms of how well costed they are as well as their projected benefits and potential drawbacks in solving any identified problems.
@Bill – we have actually had one advocate of extending the Bakerloo to the coast!
Your point about modern schemes’ justification raises the interesting question as to the types of justification used for historical schemes. The tipping point – almost the invention if transport planning in the way we know it – came, in terms of timing, with the introduction of Transport Supplementary Grant in the early ’70s, when the Department’s Chief Transport Engineer (Roy Spence) found it necessary to tour the country explaining to recalcitrant local authorities how to justify the new investment that the grant was supposed to support. Prior to that planning – for both roads and public transport – had been driven, by perhaps three things- commercial viability, political (new tramways to serve better municipal housing, the need to communicate with Ireland faster) and military strategy, and – difficult to understand today, perhaps, – an excess of liquidity in the capital market. Keynsian economics added labour relief as a fourth . What I mean by the excess of capital liquidity is the shortage of good commercial schemes in which to invest. It’s something that led to the railway booms and crashes in the C19, and the rival and bizarre competing tube schemes of the Edwardian era here (and a similar slue (?) of equally bizarre interurban schemes in the States).
What actually prompted this seachange appears to be the realisation – very slow to materialise – that public transport was never going to be profitable in the future – a message understood first in the UK by LT in relation to the bus network, although Tilling and BET had had some inkling earlier with the retrenchment of the deep rural bus network. And it was LT that pioneered many of the types of tools we use today. The belief that railways were “profitable ” is certainly one that persisted right up to their privatisation, although the intellectual basis for that belief was and is obscure.
@Bill
As an example of what might have been, we published a few years ago a series on the Fleet Tube. This first part talked about the Aldwych shuttle in passing – there are more details about extending it in the comments.
To expand upon Graham H’s point on planning, Part 4 of this series explains the changes in transport planning that occurred over the 1980s.
The sixth installment of this series is in work and will bring the saga up to the present, and beyond, including a summary of where the state of transport planning sits now.
@Graham H
“we have actually had one advocate of extending the Bakerloo to the coast!”
I remember that – The BakerLewes: a (facetious) attempt to resolve the squabble between the BML2 lobby and the Bakerloo extendadori over the best use for the Hayes branch.
@Graham Hewett – Really now.
Have wondered though which lines out of the Metropolitan, Bakerloo and Jubilee would have likely taken over the unbuilt branch from Swiss Cottage to Highgate via Hampstead (towards Alexandra Palace) had it been built, since it would have essentially butterflied away the Northern Heights branch from Highgate to Alexandra Palace.
https://www.hydeparknow.uk/2018/04/13/150-years-swiss-cottage-line/
@Long Branch Mike – Regarding one of the alternative route options through Central London for Fleet / Jubilee Line, how was the line to diverge from London Bridge to Upper Thames / Cannon Street and beyond to Charing Cross?
Look forward to the sixth installment of the Jubilee Line Series .
Btw, was also wondering what happened to the Morgan tube article from a few years back as the link appears to be broken?
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2009/what-if-the-morgan-line/
@Timbeau – quite – the BML2 people have a lot to answer for.
@Graham H: the realisation – very slow to materialise – that public transport was never going to be profitable in the future
A key moment being the 1962 cost benefit study for the Victoria Line – interestingly in the context of the discussion of Crossrail’s impact on LT finances, it found that LT would lose £2.14m a year on operating the line, plus another million a year in revenue diverted from other services (a factor the promoters of early tube schemes didn’t have to worry about – diverting money from other services being the whole point).
I can think of a few useful reasons to look at past proposed schemes:
– Because sometimes ideas float around for a long time and then get picked up and actually happen (Ringrail -> the Overground, Crossrail, the Great Northern and City through running)
– To understand the trade-offs that were made to get where we are today (eg. why the Jubilee Line eventually went to Canary Wharf not Thamesmead tells you a lot about the evolution of British political culture between the 1970s and the 1990s)
– because examining failure can be as informative as examining success – eg. PoP’s comments about short shuttle lines could explain why the often-proposed extension of the Holborn branch to Waterloo (which went as far as getting Parliamentary powers in the 60s) wouldn’t have been a great success (and could also apply to the biggest failure of recent years – the dangleway).
More broadly, the lesson is that there are many more unsuccessful schemes than successful ones, because to succeed a scheme needs to have an economic case, a social case, a political case, and good timing. Some of these things are inherent to the scheme, and some are pure happenstance (eg. if it wasn’t for the Brexit referendum, Dartford would be on the Overground).
But – does the Victoria Line still operate “At a loss”? I think not, given the loadings, but I would appreciate some actual figures.
[Needless derogatory political comment on something only peripheral to the thread deleted PoP]
Greg Tingey,
A very interesting question. I don’t think there is a simple answer.
On the basis that the tube currently makes a small operating profit, I suspect that the Victoria line is ‘profitable’ as it is one of the busiest lines. Of course, there is always the issue of allocating costs such as staffing at the busier interchange stations.
I think a lot of the original thinking about the line being loss-making when open were based on abstraction of revenue that would have previously have been allocated to other lines. Clearly, with the Underground so busy these days, this doesn’t apply.
The ‘abstraction of revenue’ argument is always a bit tenuous. It could equally be applied to any other line as doubtless some passengers would use other lines if the line in question didn’t exist. Furthermore, there comes a point where the line is an established fixture and it hardly makes sense to talk about extraction of revenue about one line in preference to others.
With One Man Operation (as it was then called) on the Victoria line, guards on all other lines and labour costs being a huge portion of running costs it is hard to believe that by any sensible comparative measure it was anything but the most profitable (or least loss-making) line. Certainly on the basis of subsidy per passenger it was probably true.
Note that nowadays it is hard to imagine the Waterloo & City being other than hugely-loss making. Short 4-car trains (so holding fewer passengers), flow very one-directional in the peak, very light off-peak traffic and train drivers and fitters based at a Central line depot in East London who are rostered every now and then to be on the Waterloo & City line (so travelling time is part of the ‘working’ day) mean it is almost inconceivable that it makes money.
@GregT – at the risk of sounding like the late professor Joad, I dare say it all depends what you mean by loss. The accountants brought in to advise on a possible privatisation of the Underground had the greatest difficulty with valuing the tunnels. The paradox was, as they put it, that assets such as tunnels were, in fact, liabilities that required constant expenditure, whereas the “liabilities” such as any obligation to run a service were assets in the sense that they earned money in the form of grants. As is well known, in the end we continued with the practice of representing the value of the invested capital as being the unwritten down sum of all the subsidies paid to date. That didn’t make for a conventional business, however, and probably the only answer to your question would be in terms of the line covering its operating costs.
@IanJ – thank you for the Victoria Line figures. A couple of things to draw out from your comments:
– You perhaps imply that “pre-planning” schemes have a very long after life of which the Victoria, Jubilee and Hackney-Wimbledon are obvious cases, whose origins go back to 1946 and quite possibly before the war. Very few schemes have started from a blank sheet of paper as perhaps they should have.
– I should have added political intervention, as you also mention, as a factor in scheme design; this really only became a serious problem once the operators became dependent on public subsidy. The unedifying DLR/Fleet line story illustrates that and the debates over HS2 (especially in the E Midlands) will also tell the same story.
Graham H @ 19 September 2018 at 10:22
“assets such as tunnels were, in fact, liabilities that required constant expenditure”
Surely that’s true of anything that either an Economist or an Engineer would call an asset?
Every gutter require a sweep to remove leaves and debris.
Even the most robust technologies of the past 20 or 30 years require some maintenance.
@Alan Griffiths – these were accountants…. (They were also looking for a nice piece of symmetry to their contention about liabilities to make their advice look witty ). BTW, you are so lucky to live somewhere where the gutters are swept.