Just when we had the Met one, Station Master Geoff brings his series of ‘Secrets’ videos on the tube, with a final ride on the last line – the Waterloo & City.
Monthly Archives: June 2014
New App update
iOS 7 icon
Version 1.8 of Station Master has now been released and is live on the App Store where you can get a free update, and we’re thrilled because it’s got several new things that we’ve been working on …
- New carriage graphics that are displayed when you look at exit information
- Geolocation (pull down) now gives you a short cut straight to the nearest station
- Settings are now within the App itself
- Updates and corrections to database
- MORE maps added, 269 out of 270 tube stations completed – just one more to go!
We’ll be featuring and focusing on the new features in some posts over the next few days …
Canary Wharf Seating
The largest roundels at platform level on the tube system … are impressive, so impressive in fact that it seems that some people want to climb up onto them and use them as seating! Like you do …
Take a pew …
Metropolitan Line Video
Station Master Geoff has been out on the network again, producing the latest (and last?) video for Londonist, this time on the line that matches his purple coloured t-shirt …
Update maps
With version 1.8 about to be released, we’ve been busying away getting ALL 270 tube maps ready (in 3D) for this finally to be complete!
And in doing so, we’ve been going back over some of the older (drawn early on) 3D maps and updating those too, including this one – Finsbury Park, which was in bad need of an update!
Others such at Willesden Junction, Oxford Circus and Elephant & Castle which are also still of an ‘old’ style design will be refreshed to look much nicer too.
Finsbury Park 3D
Emergency Bus Fares
With the buses going cash-free from the 6th July and the fact that you cannot guarantee that your contactless payment card might be rejected as payment if your Oyster card has run out of credit, TfL have this weekend (8th June) introduced “One more bus journey“.
If you have no credit or pass on your Oyster card, you will now be able to make one more journey on a bus. You then have to top up your pay as you go credit to clear the negative balance before you can use your Oyster card again.
As this Station Master boarded a bus today, we saw “One more bus journey” in action. The Oyster card of the passenger in front made the ticket machine emit an unfamiliar sequence of beeps and the ticket machine display read “Emergency Fare £1.45”.
The driver called the passenger back and printed out a paper ticket, which the passenger kindly allowed us to photograph.
Gloucester Sticker
The poor old Piccadilly .. gets some rough treatments sometimes. When Embankment closed on the Northern & Bakerloo and then Bond Street is disrupted on the Central and Jubilee for months on end, the signs were up and stickers on the carriage maps on the trains almost immediately.
With Gloucester Road on the Piccadilly (now closed until the end of the year), the DMI’s in the trains have still been saying ‘The next station is Gloucester Road’ and NO stickers have been on the carriage maps .. until now!
We finally spotted one last night, strangely in a carriage where some maps had them and some didn’t.
Not stopping at Gloucester Road
CommuterClub
Commuter Club
We stumbled across a travel-related website at the weekend that we’d not seen before, and had one of those “We can’t believe no one’s done this before”, type moments – and so thought it worthy of a mention.
It’s CommuterClub, and they’re out to save you money on your Oyster card buy letting you buy an annual travel card – but at a reduced rate.
It’s always cheaper to buy an annual travelcard than it is to pay for weeklies or monthlies, but of course you have to shell out all that money in advance – something which not everyone has. There are a few large corporate companies out there that let you have a ‘season ticket loan’ that let you spread the cost of your travel from your salary – but if your workplace doesn’t do it, then this could be the thing for you instead.
You can sign up for an annual travel card, and pay back CommuterClub at a monthly rate – working out cheaper for you than if you normally buy weekly or monthly tickets. They have a page where you can work out how much you can save depending on what zone you regularly travel in from .
You can also cancel at anytime, so you’re not committed to the whole year – and you’ll save time too never having to go back to the ticket machine or ticket office to buy another weekly every week or month, you can just go for a whole year instead!
All 270 maps … complete
Exciting times App-wise, as this week we finished something that we started back in December 2012. It’s taken a year and a half, but we’re finally at the point where we have 3D maps drawn for all 270 tube stations – here’s a little sneak preview of one of the final ones (quite complicated to draw), Canary Wharf station.
Version 1.8 of the Station Master App is therefore imminent – it’s the longest gap we’ve ever had in terms of ‘number of days’ since it was last updated, but that’s because we’ve been hard beavering away, and putting loads in – it’s coming up very soon now – watch this space!
Canary Wharf 3D Map
Secrets of the Circle Line
Station Master Geoff has been out and about again for Londonist, this time on the Circle Line – with his latest video in the series.