We like this from twitter user Ben Walters who today on his travels spotted that someone on the District Line at Westminster had taken it upon themselves to write and leave some uplifting post-it notes on the route diagram on the platform …
Happy Post It notes
We used the Gospel Oak to Barking (GOBLIN) branch of the Overground on Friday’s charity tube challenge, and noticed two things of interest.
After a year of the new ramp being put in place, the temporary barriers are still across at the the top of the northern entrance/exit at Walthamstow Queen St. station – no one seems to quite know why they haven’t got on with opening it up, and it’s been like that for a year now.
Especially when ticketing work is well underway and in progress as we witnessed here at Leytonstone High Road where a new gateline is being installed, and might already be functional by the time that you read this.
New Ticket Barriers
With apologies to this being a link on the Daily Mail website (because it’s the only place we can find it), but a web developer called Chris Gray has made a global tube map – linking up all the countries in the world, with a Beck style map.
World Tube Map
“Chris Gray, 47, came up with his whimsical idea for the map when watching a cricket match in Australia
I was sat in Melbourne after watching England lose another test and thought it would be great to nip over to England for Christmas and New Year and then go back to the sun, so I came up with the idea of a world Underground and started drawing it”.
Read http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2598871/Maps-reveal-WORLD-connected-using-global-underground-network.html.
Here’s what a group of twenty people look like having completed the Tube Challenge and visited all 270 stations in one day for the charity event Walk The Tube.
We started on the 05.15 out of Chesham, and completed 18 hours, 13 minutes and 29 seconds later.
We made a slight cheat in that we used the Overground to visit Kensington Olympia, because it’s hard enough scheduling that in on a regular challenge – getting it to work for a mass-group was never going to happen, but it was good enough for us!
Anyone fancy another one next year?
At the finish, at Heathrow Terminal 5
Hello! Today, we’re very much involved in a charity ‘All 270 Stations’ around the tube network attempt, it’s called Walk The Tube, because none of the connections between the stations or lines will involve running – it will all be walked.
Walk the tube
There will be no attempt at setting a new record time, instead it’s a way to get a large group of people (20 of us) around the network just so that they can all say that they’ve been to all the stations on the network!
We are tweeting using the #walkthetube hashtag today and look out for us on your travels too! We started this morning at Chesham at 5am, and should finish at Heathrow tonight at around 11pm.
Pudding Mill Lane Publicity
The new Pudding Mill Station is being built just about alongside and in full view of the old one. Publicity on the network proudly boasts it as being the largest of all the DLR stations – and it is going to be.
Built inside a large box structure, it’s expected to be a station that people will use to come to the new Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park a lot, which opens this weekend.
All the tracks are in place, except for where they join the existing line, and that’s what the 10 day closure is all about – putting those tracks in place and getting all the computer signalling working. It’s going to be an impressive station once done, and the last new TfL owned station that’s going to be opened for a while.
New Pudding Mill Lane Station
The original Pudding Mill Lane – a windswept island platform with single staircase and lift – is closing on Thursday 17th April.
Pudding Mill Lane
That’s because a new Pudding Mill Lane station is opening 200 metres to the east, as the original station is slap bang in the middle of where some major Crossrail works need to be, so they’ve had to move the station – by building a completely new station.
The new Pudding Mill Lane will open on the 28th April, meaning that for 10 days, there will be no DLR services on this branch between Poplar and Stratford. But before then, get down to the old PML station to see it before it goes …
Pudding Mill Lane
We spotted this on the Central Line at White City recently – at the western end (front of the train) of the westbound platform.
It’s a flower box, with stickers celebrating 150 years of the Underground, and for reasons that we can’t fathom – the Bakerloo and Circle Lines, and one for the Overground too.
But we like the two roundels in the bottom left of the photo best, where the Overground is called ‘Over Rated‘ and the tube coloured one ‘Under Rated‘. Someone at White City doesn’t think the Overground is that great, huh?
Not a fan of the Overground