I can't believe a year has passed since I wrote about my mothers 90th birthday. Every birthday after 90 needs something special by way of celebration and this year for her 91st my son and I took her on a special trip run by the London Transport Museum on a 1938 London tube train. We travelled from Amersham to Harrow on the Hill and back - an area once known as Metro-Land.
The name "Metro-Land" was created in 1915 by the publicity department of the Metropolitan Railway. "Metro-Land" was the advertising slogan developed to entice workers from cramped homes in Central London out into the rural paradise of Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. "Metro-Land" became the name of the annual publication of the railway's booklet which described the area the railways served through north west London and beyond. The Railway set up a separate company to develop housing and shops along the Metropolitan's line. Much of the area was extensively developed between the World Wars and created a distinctive atmosphere. Posters which carried the name Metro-Land depicted a sylvan landscape where ladies in hats picked flowers and drifted through sun-speckled meadows.
Some of our fellow passengers dressed in their best vintage
This 1938 tube train was still in service in the 1980s - cigarette adverts!
Gorgeous art deco light
I remember 'strap hanging' when I first lived in London
Mum and son
"Through Amersham to Aylesbury and the Vale,
In those wet fields the railway didn't pay.
The Metro stops at Amersham today."
Metro-land John Betjeman
