Don't all laugh at once, but one of my childhood ambitions - or so I seem to remember - was to be a train driver. Funny then, that one of my favourite things in Lyon - here speaks my inner-(or not so inner) child - should be the driver-less train. Between Gare de Vaise and Gare de Venisseux, (surely Lyon metro's answer to Tweedledee and Tweedledum), which top and tail the thread of green winding its way across the Lyonnaise metroscape, there runs a two-carriaged, bright orange, completely-automated shuttle train. Day and night (well until at least 00:19 ) this little train dashes about Lyon, slipping underneath both the Rhone and the Saone, joining East to West, and all without a single driver. Metro line D's homage to the Stansted terminal shuttle bus? The result of a thwarted train designer's desire to build roller coasters? Perhaps said train designer played too many Star Wars computer games late at night and became confused? Just as, when seated at the very front or very back of Maggaly the Metro*, the dark underground tunnel, lit only by faintly glowing blue lights, spirals away into the distance; an endless list of explanations for the driver-less train suggests itself. Who knows where the idea came from? Well, this fan doesn't really mind. Let the origins of the brilliant train remain lost in the mists of time, leaving us fans free to take up our seats in front of the glass bubble windows at either end of each carriage, and to enjoy whizzing about in underground tunnels, pretending to drive the train.
*Maggaly the Metro, Thomas the Tank Engine's French girlfriend. For a few factual titbits about Maggaly, see her personal page at wikipedia.
1 comment:
never knew about maggaly!
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