A tool box which caught my eye because of the care with which a rough wooden box had been replicated in die stamped plastic. It looked decent enough, but somehow such a flagrant fake irritated my sense of what is proper - which is a little silly of me as many buildings, both new and old, are into fakery of much the same sort without irritating in the same way. Perhaps the difference is that the fakery in buildings tends to be ornamental, rather than the whole thing. Cannot the hordes of wannabee creative people pouring out of all our art and design places come up with something better for tool boxes?
The tool box may have been for the use of the contractors who were busily extending the already long platform a couple of yards or so in a southerly direction. Together with the rather larger scale extensions to the platforms at a number of the stations on the way into town, I was told that it was all part of a move up to a 10 coach standard for all the trains on this part of the network, so maybe a bit less involuntary standing (although I often to prefer to stand these days). The building works were running late and it was not clear whether the 10 coach trains were to be the product of strapping two extra coaches onto the existing sets, perhaps cannibalising some of them to provide the extra, or whether there was to be a new purchase.
The latter might have the plus of loosening the grip of Porterbrook Leasing (http://www.porterbrook.co.uk/) on what was our rolling stock, an operation which I understand to be headed up by a small number of chaps who made a very large amount of money out of the sell-off of British Rail assets and whose unusual property tag is to be seen on the inside of all Southwest Trains rolling stock, just above the windows at the ends of the carriages.
No comments:
Post a Comment