In a brick train shed, wide steps lead down from where the photograph stands towards the right, onto a platform that is visible through an arch in the far wall. A matching arch on the other side of the wall is blank, while a wide arch between the two reveals a second platform, between a railway track and a bright red wall. Above those arches are blank ones that surround the walls. The roof beams are cream-pained wood, held up by red and dark green metal beams. Light from a skylight forms shadows matching the beams on the side wall.

Welcome to the London Borough of…, part III

Last time: there was a lot to see in Crystal Palace Park, but what there wasn’t was an abundance of borough signs. Four down, 29 to go. Why did I think for a moment this would be possible in a day?

There comes a point when you’re doing something like this where you have to admit defeat; to accept that the only thing more foolish than starting the task would be to continue, when the odds are clearly stacked against you. It was therefore on a bench in Crystal Palace Park, the blazing sun beating down on both the dinosaurs and me, that—with a heavy heart, of course—I decided to head back into central London. I’d have a nice, relaxing day; maybe take in a museum or two; perhaps sit in a café and writing a series of blog posts about the attempt to try and salvage something from it.

Yeah, if you believe that you’re clearly new to this blog.

What I did decide to do, though, was plan. Using Street View on Google Maps,1 I found a point on Stafford Road as a reasonable target—two more signs, covering two of the more awkward boroughs to get, Croydon and Sutton. Sutton especially is not well-served by TfL services on rails; it fares slightly better than Bexley, but only because of two tram stops on a line running along one of its inward-facing borders.

Talking of the trams, the other attraction of this plan was that it helped with my side-quest of travelling on as many modes of transport as possible. From Crystal Palace, I needed to get a non-TfL train one stop to Birkbeck, and then a tram across to Wandle Park.2 That would then leave me, once I’d walked to the signs, near Waddon railway station, ready for me to get a train back to central London if by that point I’d got bored.

The journey started as expected. Crystal Palace is impressively huge for a random suburban station, and I guess that’s because it’s not really a random suburban station. When it was built, this was a huge exhibition centre, potentially catering for massive crowds; indeed, this was the less impressive of the two Crystal Palace stations, with only the subway surviving from the larger one after it was closed in 1954. Sadly I did not get to enjoy waiting in the grand Victorian train shed, because it points the wrong way—the train to Birkbeck goes from another platform that’s relegated to the southern side.

The train was uneventful, as was Birkbeck station—except for the fact that it’s really two separate stations facing each other across the tracks, with the only access being to leave one and enter the other. Someone clearly recognises that this is silly, because there’s a fence between the two tracks to stop you jumping down and running between the two platforms that way, but they didn’t think it was silly enough to do anything useful about it. But perhaps this blog is the wrong audience; after all, according to the poster on the tram side, Roger the Crocodile wants to hear from me.3

Looking down on a large yellow brick train shed from a bridge. On the far wall, there are three arches: two narrow ones on either side flanking a large one in the middle. A wide arch spans a track and a platform, while the narrow arch to the right spans a track. At a higher level, there are decorative blank arches in the wall. The roof beams are cream-pained wood, held up by red and dark green metal beams. On the left, a modern metal bridge with glass sides leads to a lift down to another platform.
The train shed at Crystal Palace station.
In a brick train shed, wide steps lead down from where the photograph stands towards the right, onto a platform that is visible through an arch in the far wall. A matching arch on the other side of the wall is blank, while a wide arch between the two reveals a second platform, between a railway track and a bright red wall. Above those arches are blank ones that surround the walls. The roof beams are cream-pained wood, held up by red and dark green metal beams. Light from a skylight forms shadows matching the beams on the side wall.
Also the train shed at Crystal Palace station, because I didn’t take many interesting pictures.
A poster in a frame, which reads: "London Trams. Tell Roger about your tram journey. #LoveYourTram. Roger the Croocdile wants to hear from you! He'd like to know about your tram journeys. Where are the places you love to visit by tram, and why? Scan the QR code to tell Roger about your Tram experiences and we will feature several of them during future activities on the Tram network. MAYOR OF LONDON; TRANSPORT FOR LONDON, EVERY JOURNEY MATTERS." The poster also contains a cartoon crocodile, whose dark-gren skin has a light-green line notched with arrows running across it, representing the trams on the Tube map. The poster is in a standard frame, with foliage behind it.
Roger the Crocodile says hello at Birkbeck tram stop.
A view from a tram platform across two tracks, which are separated by a wire-mesh fence, to the far platform. The far platform has signs that say "Birkbeck, Fare Zone 4" on them, and metal chairs in sets of four, in front of a metal fence. On the near platform, a sign on the left says "No exit". The far line has third-rail electrification, whereas the near line has an overhead wire. In the background are trees beneath a clear blue sky.
Birkbeck station from Birkbeck tram stop.

I think the best way I can describe the tram ride is by quoting from a series of WhatsApp4 messages I sent my husband during the journey:

  • 14:01: There are some teenagers on this tram playing incredibly loud dance music and shouting, and it’s probably the first time I’ve felt that nightclub atmosphere on public transport
  • 14:02: Turns out the dance music is “Bad” by Michael Jackson
  • 14:05: “King Fu Fighting” now [sic]
  • 14:06: Now the music has stopped and they’re _a cappella_ing something
  • 14:06: The italics didn’t work but nvm
  • 14:15: There was a teacher who went to tell them off, but she got off at East Croydon and now they’re loud again.
  • 14:16: They got off at the stop after and it’s like a whole different tram

I did myself consider getting off in central Croydon to look around, having never been. As the tram passed through, however, I noticed that it reminded me of Bradford, except without the nostalgia I’d get from going to Bradford. So I decided to press on, though I did take a picture from the tram of the 50p Building, which was one of the landmarks in Croydon I’d actually heard of.5

I got off at Wandle Park and made my way through pretty standard London suburbia to reach the signs. As I’d hoped, there were two of them. I left Croydon…

The blog's author, scowling at the camera, his hair messily held off his forehead by a white pair of headphones. He stands in front of a sign made of two parts: a white disc with a coat of arms on it (motto: "AD SUMMA NITAMUR"), and a purple sign which follows the shape of the disk for its concave upper edge, and is a horizontal line at the bottom. The text on the purple part says "Croydon" and (in smaller text) "Waddon", both in white and separated by a white horizontal line. The sign is supported by a single tube of metal, which has been formed into two vertical legs and a semicircular top part to match the disc-shaped sign. The background, other than a distant lamppost just visible at the bottom of the frame, is a blue gradient so featureless it could have been inserted in Photoshop (but wasn't).
“Waddon”, as in “Waddon earth was I thinking?”

… and entered Sutton…

The blog's author looking down at the camera, unsmiling, wearing a black t-shirt and white headphones. Behind him is an elliptical green sign. The main text of the sign is "Welcome to London Borough of Sutton", in white; above this text is the borough's logo, a tree on a white disc with a brown ring near its edge, and the word "Sutton" offset in brown to the lower-left of the tree. The sign is held up by two black posts. Behind the sign is just a blue sky; the sun is masked by the sign, but a halo of its light is visible around the top of the post on the left.
The absence of the word “the” annoys me irrationally here.

… before immediately turning back to Croydon, in the direction of Waddon station. At this point I was tired, and uncomfortable from the heat, and frankly getting bored of this whole borough sign thing. So it was time to follow my plan, and get the train back into central London.

Yeah, if you believe that…

To be continued… And if you can’t believe that I’ve managed to get (counting the next one) at least four blog posts out of this one day two-and-a-half years ago, neither can I. If you want to suggest something else for me to write about, the suggestion box is thataway.

Borough count: 6/33.

  1. This post is not sponsored, but, if anyone from Google is reading this, I hear you have lots of money and I’d happily take some of it as a thank-you. ↩︎
  2. Indeed, this would be the first time I’d travelled on London Trams, and would leave Nottingham Express Transit as the only system left for me to tick off in the UK. ↩︎
  3. Or, at least, wanted to. I’ve tried to find any trace of him online, and all I can find is content from shortly after he was introduced, which was eight months before my journey (of course it’s Diamond Geezer, of course it is). Wikipedia tells me that “Many [crocodile] species are at risk of extinction”, and I fear that for Roger it may already be too late. ↩︎
  4. I hear Meta has lots of money too. ↩︎
  5. I haven’t uploaded that picture to this post because it’s an awful picture. Sorry. 🙁 ↩︎

2 responses to “Welcome to the London Borough of…, part III”

  1. diamond geezer Avatar
    diamond geezer

    I miss Roger the Crocodile.

    Reply
    1. Alex Avatar
      Alex

      Genuinely sad he didn’t have the staying power of Becky/Tooting the Night Tube Owl.

      Reply

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