To Metro-land! — golden hour everywhere

A Journey There and Back Again on the London Underground's Metropolitan Line — a semester of independent research, written and designed as an illustrated ebook.

What began as a question — why does one Underground line stretch so much farther than the rest? — became a book about railway history, the invented suburb of "Metro-land," and what authenticity means for a place that was always, from the very beginning, a marketing campaign. The book is available in paperback: To Metro-land! on Amazon.

From the Prelude

I've always loved travelling. To me, the art of getting from one place to another is as much a part of the experience as the destination. I've always loved the feeling of an airport or a train station; the liminal energy such places have. I've also always been highly partial to the strange romanticism of commuting. When I was a child I would look forward to the bus ride to and from school every day and the simple pleasure of watching the world roll by while tuning out to the tinny strains of mid-2000s pop songs on my ancient iPod shuffle.

Now, I understand that most people don't feel the same way about commuting. To most, it's a chore; a necessary evil of living somewhere and working somewhere else. It's about getting from point A to point B with little concern of how. The act of commuting is simply an exercise in enduring the period of time from one place to the next.

Such is very much the atmosphere on the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground. Every single trip of the now multiple times I have ridden back and forth on this line, I am acutely aware that I am here for a very different purpose than most on this train. They are here for the ride; I am here for the journey.

The Metropolitan Line is perhaps not the most obvious or practical London Underground line to spend several months studying. There are other much more convenient lines to travel on with just as much history as the Met… Despite all this, I found myself drawn to the Metropolitan line. In my mind there was something special, something distinctly unique about this particular branch of the London Underground. There was just something intriguing about this mysterious line that spanned out further than any other, and I was determined to find out what it was.

Thus, like many others before me, I set out on the Metropolitan line away from the city, although still unsure of what I was hoping to discover.

The full book covers the history of the London transportation system, the dream and marketing myth of Metro-land, a station-by-station journey to the end of the line, and a meditation on authenticity — with photographs, maps, and a poem or two along the way.