And The Winner Is (again ...)

Scissor Sisters London Underground Competition Results

OK people, this one promises to be good because it's not obvious to the untrained eye what kind of train Mary is getting on in the Scissor Sisters' video of the same name.

About halfway through the comments of the relevant post I gave away the fact that the answer had already been given, which therefore leaves us with our mystery train being one of the following:

Bakerloo, Central, Northern, Piccadilly or Victoria.

Let's do the easy ones first - it's not the Central or Northern lines. Central line trains have external doors and Northern line trains have door buttons on the doors themselves. No external doors or door buttons are in evidence if you study the video I'm afraid.

This leaves us with Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Victoria. All three are similar but the Piccadilly train is different to the other two in a number of ways.

Look very carefully at this picture from Annie's screen grab:


On the far left of picture is the door and to its right, above the window, is a horizontal black line which is one of the window vents of the train. You will notice that it does not extend the entire length of the window. All of the vents on Piccadilly line trains extend the entire length of the window as can be seen from this picture below (taken at Rayners Lane, as fool will tell you):


Therefore, the train in the video is not a Piccadilly line train.

Which leaves us with the almost identical Bakerloo and Victoria lines. Except they have one glaring difference between them.

Examine, if you will, this picture of a Bakerloo train at Paddington:


You will notice the glowing route code box in the bottom left of the left hand window. This is where the train number on Bakerloo trains is displayed. Compare this to the Victoria line, whose stock carries the train number in a box BELOW the central window in a recess:


(Note the similar vent length compared to a Bakerloo train). Incidentally, this further rules out the Piccadilly line, as their train numbers are shown with the destination at the top of the front of the train:


Now let's look at some more clips from the video. Here is one I grabbed of the train just passing Mary's head (sorry about the crappy quality):


The glow from the route code box can quite clearly be seen on the left of picture AND you will also notice from this grab, a split second later, that there is no recess where there would be one on a Victoria line train:


So, without any shadow of a doubt, this is a Bakerloo line train. There was talk of seeing dark blue line diagrams and seat cover colours but frankly, the hue of the video (a nasty blue one) doesn't really aid identification in this case.

HOWEVER, if you fast forward to just after one minute into the video and watch the sequence where Mary is walking away from a train, you will notice that the train in the shot is a Victoria line train. You can spot this if you freeze the picture just as he sings "I'm" in "I'm always gonna live to be your man" at about 1 min 6 when the gap between the departing train's cars reveals a Victoria line tube map on the wall (thanks to subwayrail for pointing this out). I've highlighted some of the station names for you. She's probably at King's Cross or Euston here:


So the film crew obviously filmed her getting ON at a Bakerloo station and then filmed her walking AWAY from a Victoria line train somewhere else later on. But since Annie asked which train she was on FIRST, the answer is still Bakerloo for the reasons outlined above. After all, she is never actually seen ON the Victoria line train; she was only filmed walking away from the platform in a crowd of people.

So there you have it. Which means the lucky contestants through to the Paperclip Lottery are:

Anne-Marie, JJC and Steeevooo

Well, the paperclips came out again and the paperclip chosen was the ... RED one, which means that winner of this amazing quiz is ... Steeevooooooooooooo!

Yes, you've won a fridge magnet!! (It's almost as good as Bullseye isn't it?) Try to control yourself as Annie emails you to find out where to send it.

And thanks once again to everone who entered - you can now start arguing about how it can't be a Bakerloo train and that because you said Victoria, you are technically right etc etc (talk to the hand).

London Underground; Tube Posted by Anonymous Monday, January 09, 2006 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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