MInd the Gap

Yesterday I had a lovely train ride along the west coast to Ravenglass which is one of those small delights hidden away in the Lake District. (Please don’t go there). ‘Mind the Gap’ was a constant refrain as we pulled in to the stations along the way. There’s a reason for mentioning that which I’ll come to later.

So, the phrase was still fresh in my mind when I came to start writing this and began to wonder how it had become so ingrained in our culture.

The phrase ‘Mind the Gap’ was coined in around 1968 for a planned automated announcement, after it had become impractical for drivers and station attendants to warn passengers on the London Underground. The phrase had to be short. A concise warning was also easier to paint onto the platform.

London Underground

The Mind the Gap announcement was first heard in 1969 and was recorded by Sound Engineer Peter Lodge. Peter originally hired an actor to voice the recording, but royalties were expected, and as the announcement would be played thousands of times a day, this simply was not financially viable. Subsequently, Peter made the recordings himself until someone more suited could be found.

Over the years, the message has been recorded by many people, but there is one heart-warming story regarding the one voiced by the actor Oswald Laurence, who made the recordings for the Northern line in the late 1960s/ early 1970s (the exact dates are unknown).

Oswald Laurence was born on 25 March 1929 in Hamburg, Germany. He was a theatre actor and lived in London with his wife, Dr Margaret McCollum, until his death in 2007 at the age of 78.

Margaret was devastated at the loss of her husband, but one place where she could relive the happy memories was on the platform at Embankment station, where she would sit and listen to Oswald’s voice. One day in November 2012, she made her regular visit to the platform only to find her husband was no longer there as the PA system had been updated. Deeply saddened by what had happened, Margaret was comforted by station staff, who were unaware of the value the previous recording held for her.

As the PA system had now been digitalized, it seemed an almost impossible ask to retrieve the tapes and reinstate the announcement with Oswald’s voice. However, Transport for London staff delved deep into the archives and found the old tapes, which were digitalized and restored and if you ever visit the Northbound platform of the Northern line at Embankment station, the voice of Oswald Laurence lives on to the present day. What to many may seem just a regular safety announcement, the Mind the Gap message brings much happiness to one special person. Isn’t that wonderful.

Margaret McCollum

Nowadays the announcements on the national railways are provided by their own staff. For instance Northern Rail had a Meet the New Voices on our Trains: Peter & Laura! ‘Peter is a conductor based in York and Laura is our cyber security & compliance manager. You'll start hearing them welcoming you on board and providing safety announcements along your journey. Laura does Mind the Gap.’

I’d just like to go back to my trip to Ravenglass. There is the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway and you just get on and off the small carriages which are at platform level. When I was getting back on the mainline train this brought to mind that for wheelchair users, and many other passengers with mobility impairments, a step of a few inches may as well be a ten-foot wall. With few exceptions, station or train staff need to deploy a manual ramp to provide level boarding. This assistance typically needs to be booked 24 hours in advance. As many wheelchair users will attest, booking this assistance is no guarantee that it will actually be provided. Sadly, mobility impaired passengers cannot simply ‘turn up and go’ on Britain’s mainline railway network.

Train operating company focus groups, even those about passenger information, regularly receive feedback on the need for step-free access. Parents with buggies, people with strollers, seniors with limited mobility, passengers with luggage, cyclists, and shoppers with large purchases all benefit from accessibility improvements. For people to become car-free, they need alternative mobility modes that are flexible and accessible. Accessibility is no longer seen as a nice-to-have, but rather the legal and ethical obligation of a public service.

Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway

The latest book, Musical Tables, from Billy Collins in 2022 is completely made up of short and very short poems. But this is mine:

Mind the Gap
I do
I do mind the gap
I mind enormously

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.