Station Master App

Northern Line Invaders

Seems like there’s been a spate of ‘Fake Signs’ doing the round on the tube again, with various people tweeting us links to fake signs that people have been sticking up in carriages on tubes.

The Poke has the best summary webpage that we can find with all the current variants, including the rather excellent ‘snake charmer’ variant.

But what we like best are the ones on the Central Line that go over the line diagram maps replacing either station names, or mixing up the red line in some other awkward fashion (There’s even a Facebook Group specifically for them!).

But then something stirred in our memories and we dug through the extensive Station Master archive of tube photos, and .. yes!

We knew they were there somewhere, and here they are – the first time (we think!) that rogue stickers first appeared on the tube, as these from the Northern Line date back to 2003. The space-invaders one is our favourite.

Fun — — 21 Jan 14

Follow … who?

After Chris Hewitt tweeted about this last week here, “Only TFL would run a poster campaign announcing they’re on Twitter… and leave off their Twitter handle.”, we wondered if we could help out as it was something that we’d noticed too.

It’s fair to say that a poster advertising Twitter services, has got to give you their Twitter name – it’s a no brainer.

So we spent literally half an hour this morning putting this together which – look! Actually includes the Twitter name that would be useful to follow, along with a link that takes you to a page telling you about others, too.

We’ve left off the official roundel for obvious copyright reasons. Everything else is of our own design.

A Twitter poster that actually includes the Twitter name to follow

Posters / Publicity — — 20 Jan 14

Oyster Shaped London

Last week, those nice people at Londonist ran a story with a map that we provided for them showing the real layers of where the Oyster fare zones are in London. They had a couple of discrepancies in them though, which we’ve now tided up, and the latest version is below. Click on the map for a larger full-screen version.

The grey and white shaded areas are fare Zones 1-9 starting with Z1 which is white in the centre, also shown is where the Cycle Hire scheme is (in blue), and the congestion charging zone (in red). The edge of the London Boroughs are then shown with the orange line.

Oyster Map

Map / Oyster — — 19 Jan 14

Barking Bay Platform

Whilst on our travels on the H&C, we noticed something else had changed, that we think came into effect with the December 2013 timetable.

At Barking, there is a bay road/platform where H&C trains normally terminate and turn around in. Within the Station Master App this is what the exit information lists – Platform 3.

But now it seems that H&C trains are terminating on the same platform as District trains (Platforms 1a and 2) but whereas District trains open their doors on both sides, H&C trains only open the doors on the right, Platform 2 only.

The train then goes into sidings beyond the station, and comes back into service (as shown here) on Platform 6 instead.

A ‘S7’ stock train on the H&C line starts it journey at Platform 6, Barking.

We’re not sure if it’s a permanent thing, or just something that’s being tried out. It also seems to change depending on what time of day it is, so it is rather confusing if your starting station is Barking as to which platform to go to for the next train …

Platforms / Tube — — 18 Jan 14

New entrance at Hammersmith

The Station Master is spending a lot of time on the Hammersmith & City Line this week, so it didn’t take us long to notice the familiar blue hoarding and a million construction safety notices to spot that some new works are taking place.

Seems like the barbers shop at Hammersmith Station (C&H) is no more – perhaps everyone is buying their haircuts off the internet instead? – and so LU are turning it into a new entrance/exit on Beadon road to be complete by July of this year. A new ticket office and gateline? That should help – it does get crowded when an entire train turns out and tries to get through the three barriers.

New-Hammersmith-Entrance 1

This does make us wonder though whether they’ll make one side the way-in only, and one said the way-out only, which’ll mean a slightly longer walk if you’re connecting from the the Hammersmith (D&P) station.

Oh. And did you spot the deliberate mistake back there? We said ‘ticket office’. There will of course be no ticket office, just a bank of ticket machines ..

Infrastructure / Ticket Office — — 17 Jan 14

An evening of Kultura

A poet, an artist, an escalator-repairing music producer, the man who can taste the tube map – but most of all last night we loved musician Shaun Buswell who gave us a presentation on how he set himself the challenge of creating an orchestra made up of musicians he met as strangers whilst travelling on the London Underground.

We’re not sure how we hadn’t heard of this before, but it was brilliant as you’ll see from the video here.

Many thanks to Andy Green from Tubespiration for organsing London’s first Tube Kultura.

Events / Tube / Video — — 16 Jan 14

Covent Garden Closing

It’s as if we’re mind readers. Just yesterday we were musing about the possibility of Covent Garden doing ‘a Camden Town’ and closing at particular times, and that’s exactly what’s happening … well, sort of.

TfL just put out a press release to announce some works to the station to upgrade its lifts, and give them 25% more capacity. We’re still not quite sure how they can replace the four lifts with lifts that are 25% bigger without using some sort of TARDIS/Timelord like technology, but I guess we’ll just have to take their word for it.

The main effect of this is that Covent Garden will be exit only for 10 months from Monday 24th February onwards. In addition, westbound trains will not stop at all at weekends – meaning you’ll have to get off at Leicester Square instead.

Whilst all this great, and extra lift capacity will ease the problem (the modern lifts will also travel faster, meaning quicker shunting of passengers up and down, too) we can’t but help wonder whether it’ll also obviously be used as an experiment to see if Leicester Square station can cope on Saturdays, and in the long term – even with the new lifts – we will yet see ‘a Camden Town’ happening at Covent Garden.

Engineering / Lifts — — 15 Jan 14

A short storey about steps

An intriguing audio announcement at Covent Garden came over the PA system when we were there the other day. Far from being told to mind the gap, report anything suspicious, always touch out, or any of the other mantra that’s continually spouted at you, we were told that ‘Entering the lifts from the wrong side is contravening a by-law’, and from the sounds of it could get you in trouble.

Covent Garden is of course hugely busy, and I suspect there’s a plan being mooted within TfL towers to make it exit only – a bit like Camden Town already is at the weekends. And indeed, the fastest way out of the station is to walk up the ‘entrance’ staircase, against the flow of people, and nip into the empty lift, moments before the queues of people who have been waiting on the proper side enter it and give you filthy looks for jumping the queue.

The other alternative of course is to walk up the 193 steps, which (as another of their famed audio announcements informs you) is the equivalent to a fifteen storey building. And their advice isn’t to be taken lightly – we once saw a man halfway up sat down, looking very red, out of breath, and a member of station staff and paramedic coming the other way down the stairs to assist him.

So if 193 steps is a fifteen storey building, that’s … (digs out calculator) 12.8 steps per storey. Right?

So we were rather surprised the other day when visiting Hampstead station – the deepest on the whole of the network, with the highest number of steps on its emergency staircase, in this case there are 320 of them (There are exactly 320 of them – 298 on the spiral, 22 flat – so why the sign says ‘over 320’ is another thing that is wrong), which by TfL’s maths at 12.8 steps per storey must mean it’s the equivalent to a twenty-five storey building .. right? RIGHT!

Oh. No. Wait …

It seems that ’15 storeys’ is the generic sign. Either that or TfL have a magic calculator that always gives the number ’15’ no matter what you type into it?

Expect to see a sign at Chalk Farm shortly informing you of it’s 54 steps being the equivalent to a 15 storey building …

Accessibility / Posters / Signage / TfL — — 14 Jan 14

A case of the false facade

We thought that we were all tubed-out in terms of Sherlock after we’d been dished up a lot of mixed up trains a couple of weeks ago in the first episode, but we knew that something might be going on when we received a text message from a friend saying “Is it true about the houses?” – as we were half an hour behind watching it on catchup.

“That’ll be a Leinster Gardens reference then” announced this Station Master, and sure enough, when we got to part in the programme ourselves, there was Sherlock, Watson and Mrs. Watson all holed up in the best-fake-addressed-house in London.

The best way to visit the houses-that-aren’t as created by the Metropolitan Line is to of course visit them yourself, but for a cosier warmer view you can just use Google Maps from above to look down on the location, where clearly there is a gap in the houses and the railway runs instead.

One thing we’re not clear on though is how much of an ‘inside’ of 23-24 Leinster Gardens there really is. When Station Master Geoff passed through last year whilst making the District Line video for the Londonist and he dropped by (scroll to 3m 38s), there was only a small crack in the window revealing a tiny room which I doubt leads to a long corridor as shown in the programme.

So if you’ve never been, next time you’re in central west London, hop out at either Bayswater or Paddington, to discover London’s best false address.

Secret trains / Tube / Tube on TV — — 13 Jan 14

S7 Rollout Continues

We’ve been watching with interest the amount of new S7 trains that are coming into the network, replacing the old C-Stock on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines.

Three more C Stock units are being scrapped this weekend – leaving only a couple left on the lines. When they get replaced in the next couple of weeks, attention will then switch to the Edgware Road to Wimbledon branch of the network, which is run by just eight units.

For us, it’s meant having to go back and visit a whole load of stations again to get the new exact carriage and door positions all over again for stations where this has changed. This usually occurs where the exit is at the rear of the train and the nearest exit is no longer in the sixth carriage, but in the seventh – as these new trains have an extra carriage.

The new data won’t be in the App until the next update, after which we’ll switch our attention to the rest of the District Line – as the new trains get rolled out on the rest of the line into 2015 – and that will mean a major upheaval of the data for us all over again.

With the extra carriage making the train longer, we expected to find more stations where the whole train didn’t fit, but the only places it really affected were on the western side of ‘the Circle’ – namely Paddington, Bayswater, Notting Hill Gate and High Street Kensington are all stations where not all the doors in the rear carriage open.

Tube — — 12 Jan 14

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