Waxing Lyrical About The Overground
My Internet trawler found this article on a web site called The Quietus. It’s an interview with veteran writer and filmmaker; Iain Sinclair.
He says this about the London Overgroiund, when asked about the effect of the lines on his life.
It’s changed mine enormously, in a sense. It’s so convenient that I tend to make journeys that reflect on the railway rather than journeys that I need to make. I wouldn’t have thought of going to Clapham Junction if I couldn’t just jump on this train and get to Clapham Junction. I wouldn’t have gone to Willesden Junction, which proved to be very useful, because I got a better sense of Leon Kossoff as a painter. He’d done some fantastic paintings of Willesden Junction but I didn’t really know Willesden Junction.
I think the Overground railway is a bit like the cinema project in that it curates. It curates a London of disparate elements. What relates Denmark Hill to Finchley and Frognal or Camden Town to Shadwell? They are now an organic identity. And sitting on this train is like sitting in a cinema. You’ve got this screen, and the landscape changes. Patrick Keiller writes that as being the view from the train; that is, really, a form of cinema. I really believe that walking is a form of cinema, and being on a train is a form of cinema, and having the excuse to stop and go to these venues and see some wonderful movie enhances that experience.
Read the full article.
I can see my own behaviour in what he says.
Every city deserves its own Overground network, designed and run to the same principles.
In the UK, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds and Liverpool seem to be going or starting to go in this direction. Manchester is going a slightly different direction by integrating its trams and trains in the Northern Hub.
As somebody once said in the past – “The Future’s Bright – The Future’s Orange!”
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