Earl’s Court, yesterday and in all the years that we’ve been commuting through Earl’s Court station it’s common that eastbound trains to the city can go to either Platform 1 or 2. However, ‘Wimbleware’ services, those that have come up from Wimbledon, and are heading to Edgware Road, always always always come in on Platform 2. In over twenty years, we don’t think we’ve ever seen one at Platform 1 before, but … we have now!
Wimbleware on One
A TfL Press Release today announced some major news, that the Croxley Rail Link had been given final approval, and work will start later this year – 2015, but won’t open now until 2019.
Actually we thought approval had already been given, but the press release confirmed that:
Map of new extension
Construction work to re-route and extend the Metropolitan line to Watford Junction is planned to start later this year. The plan, which is part of a major investment designed to support the growth and regeneration in the area, includes creating new links to Watford General Hospital, Croxley Business Park and Cardiff Road Industrial Estate – increasing employment opportunities.
Two new stations will be created at Cassiobridge and Watford Vicarage Road, served by new walk-through air-conditioned trains every ten minutes to and from central London during peak hours. The existing Watford station will close following the opening of the new stations, and the first trains are expected to run on the extended line by 2019.
TfL announced yesterday that in the future, after signalling upgrades on the SSR (sub-surface railways) that there would be ‘Twice as many Circle Line trains’ running.
At the moment, they’re once every 10 minutes (6 tph) with District Line services filling in, in-between. And we couldn’t but help think that there’s just not going to be enough space/pathing time to fit in those extra trains.
Mixed Signals
Our friends over at London Reconnections had exactly the same thought, and wrote this rather excellent piece all about it …
We’re always on the look out for anything fun or unusual on the Tube network, so we liked it yesterday when we saw this engineering train heading westbound through Turnham Green station on the District line tracks.
We knew it was coming before we saw it, because the Dot Matrix next train indicator flashed it up as a service to Ruislip, something that no District line train does so it immediately made me think we were about to some something unusual! And we did …
Engineering Train to Ruislip
Old passageway
Tucked away at the back, and below the eastbound District Line platform at Earl’s Court are some doors – which are normally closed – that lead to an old unused passageway.
The passageway used to be open up until the 1990’s when it was closed – and it took people under the outside street to the Earl’s Court exhibition entrance. There are some old doors in there too – also blocked up, with – get this – two old escalators that are no longer used.
(Click on either of these two thumbnail images to see the larger version)
Old passageway
Normally you can only look at the closed doors, but at the moment there are some works going on (cabling, by the looks of it), and if you pop down to Earl’s Court, you can have a look down the old passageway, and see where you used to be able to walk through as you could many many years ago.
Earl’s Court work
We don’t know how long the works are going to go on for, so get down there quick!
Whilst there, see if you can spot the delightful old sign where the sticker on this Piccadilly diagram is peeling away, revealing the ‘Aldwych’ branch …
Aldwych
This is doing the rounds today, and it’s superb:
A day on the London Underground from Will Gallia on Vimeo.
Will Gallia has created an animation of Tube journeys extracted from TfL Oyster data and turned it into an animation showing journeys over the course of a day.
“This project was started in 2012, but wasn’t finished until 2015. The idea was to visualise real London Underground data on the Tube map was we know it. I wanted to write all of the movement in a shader. Initially I thought I would have each journey (or person) as one pixel in the final animation, using a GLSL pixel shader to move the pixel.”
Ben Langham, who we’ve previously mentioned as part of his Tunnel Sounds project, has teamed up with video maker Huw Penson to make this rather nice new video using imagery from the Underground, and all sounds that go with it recorded by Ben.
“A creative project to remind us of the strange surroundings most of us walk through everyday. Filmed on many parts of the London Underground with permission from TfL.”
A book shop that only sells book about the London Underground? We could get on board with that! But how about this…? one that sells books mathing the correct colour of the line? And, where the titles match the station names!
Here’s the Victoria line…
Victoria Line Bookshelf
Still our favourite all time ‘alternative’ sticker on the Tube is this one which dates back to 2001 – fourteen years old now!
Aliens on the Northern Line
More reported in this BBC article here.
In the wake of the footage showing Chelsea fans in Paris not letting a man on a train, a warning appeared on the Internet to never do the same with aliens from another world …