Where's that fox? Derelict Platform 1, Queenstown Road station

Image: © Stefan Czapski Taken: 17 Nov 2021

A minute or so earlier, I'd seen a fox sniffing around on the disused platform. It sneaked off below the blue screening at the far end of the platform. I waited for a while, hoping that it would re-emerge, but it didn't. I don't think I've ever seen a fox quite so close to central London. But I'm reminded that the first foxes I ever saw in London - some years before they became widespread - were living by the railway line just east of Hampstead Heath station. Railway cuttings and embankments can make pretty good 'linear habitats', allowing wildlife to penetrate new territory and then settle. But that explanation can't apply here. The many railway lines that criss-cross the area all run well above street level, carried on continuous viaducts without margins of waste-ground. Queenstown Road is the last-but-one station on the route into Waterloo. The bridge seen at the far end of the platforms carries one of the lines out of Victoria.

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