One final (and personally meaningful) quote from A Good Parcel of English Soil (The Metropolitan Line) by Richard Mabey:

“It was scarcely more than a halt to start with, the kind of place where a few milk churns might have been thrown off the train. There was no road access, only a rough footpath on the north side leading back to Ruislip station. A photograph taken more than six years later shows wooden platforms still lit by paraffin lamps and not a house in sight.”

Just started What We Talk About When We Talk About The Tube by John Lanechester and love this quote about Beck:

“There is a little-known law on the statute books which makes it a legal requirement for every single thing ever written about the Underground to mention Harry Beck’s map of the network.”