Helena Handbasket

By Tivoli

The Titanium building was upstaged

When I board my morning train the sky is completely dark. Not a hint of dawn. I get on at the very last door in an eight carriage train, so its flanks have all whooshed past me by the time I board. For those of you living across the sea, you may not realise that rolling stock “tagged” in this way is an extreme rarity. It is normal for any carriages that have been “visited” in the night to be taken away for cleaning, so that this is not a familiar sight to the travelling public. The walls on either side of the track are another matter entirely, but the coaches are kept smart.

So when this hove into view my camera and I had no chance, and even having disembarked at Dartford, the length of the artwork, the curvature of the platform, and the inconsideration of all the commuters clambering aboard, meant that there was not a hope of capturing this in its entirety.

Words shall suffice. Those same pair of tags are repeated in green and mauve beneath each window for maybe three (or four?) full carriages. Four pairs of tags per carriage, with orange stars on each set of doors. And then for a further carriage or two, exactly the same but in magenta and cyan.

Loved it! My apologies to the purple-clad "Train Presentation Team" for seeing this as art and not vandalism.

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