We’re pretty sure that since their move to the old Olympic stadium over the summer, the nearest station for West Ham Football Club home matches is now Stratford, which leaves us wondering how long is it going to be until the signage at Upton Park station for football supporters is removed …
Who Ya Gonna Call? The sign writers who do the work for the New York subway, that’s who … as part of the promotion for the new Ghostbusters movie that’s on at the moment, the concourse at Waterloo station has been given over to many promotional materials, one of which is a New York Subway ticket booth, complete with a sign giving the actual information for the tube at Waterloo, but just down in New York Subway style, and it’s wonderful…
The Gospel Oak to Barking (GOBLIN) Overground line is about to have some major work done to it so that instead of it being diesel, it will be an electric line, and then longer electric trains will run on the branch.
In order for this work to happen though, there is a staggered closure taking place, and we don’t think the way that the publicity has been done is here is very clear. It focuses on what is closed rather than what is open, meaning that your brain has to stop and think harder to work out the reverse of what they’ve told you (what’s not working) for you then to realise what is working.
Here’s what the TfL page shows you:
GOBLIN Closure
See how quickly you can work from that what is open, and not closed!
Similarly confusing signs appear at stations along the line itself, as well as on the new June 2016 Tube Map which is about to come out where the dreaded ‘daggers’ make an appearance and you have to refer to the key to try and figure out what it means.
Instead, we’ve come up with our own simple graphic showing what is open which we think is much easier to understand at a glance.
Any chance TfL, of doing something like this in future?
Easier to Understand
Admittedly, we haven’t got out at East Putney for a while – after all, we pass through a lot of stations around the network, but it’s only when we get out of them that we always take the time to check and look if anything has changed to that station so we can update Station Master’s information. We like to think that it’s an-always-evolving App that keeps up to date with things as they subtlety change.
One such subtle change that we did notice here was this sticker – an arrow pointing to the left – covering up the fact that you could possibly get an eastbound train departing from platform 2 as well, that started here in the terminating platform.
We don’t know when it changed, but it seems that those days have gone and all trains are now through trains that started at Wimbledon, and you can no longer get a train that now starts from here.
Platform 2
Have you seen these anywhere? They’re slowly making an appearance all over the network – static ‘Stand on the right‘ signs on escalators are now being replaced with lit up versions which can say different things such as ‘Step off the escalator‘ as here when you’re reaching the end.
We’re not sure if they’re going to appear at all Tube stations (this photo was taken at Piccadilly Circus), or just selected ones in the busy central areas, but yet again, it’s just adding to the information pollution that we are now hit with when entering the Underground…!
Lit up sign
It does still fill us with deep joy that the pink signs are back for the Rugby World Cup at the moment, even moreso when we spotted this one at Westminster with a ‘This Way…’ for the the Olympic Stadium. It really does feel a little bit like 2012 is still here!
Pink
We’re very happy to get feedback about the Station Master App – as we did when one happy commuter pointed out something quite important, that the numbers of the exits at Old Street station have changed!
Old Street Exits
There are eight ways out to the surface from the subways – and so for a long time Moorfields Eye Hospital was always known as ‘Exit 8’ – except not any more. In the last couple of weeks, 8 exits have become 4 – sensible when you consider that there are four subways ‘off’ the Tube station, which then have two ways up to the street at the end of each one.
This now means that our Old Street exit map is incorrect, so we’ve updated it and it will be in a future App update.
New Old Street exits
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
First and Last trains
The new Tottenham Court Road station opened this week, but it’s Northern Line only – no Central Line trains are stopping for a year now – whilst they work on that part of the station.
So we were amused to see a sign up in the ticket hall advising Central Line passengers that the nearest station for them is … Bond Street!
Now we know that they’re doing this because they don’t want to add to the overcrowding at Oxford Circus, but if you genuinely read that sign and then walked down the road towards Bond Street to get the Central Line, you’d actually get to Oxford Circus first! Making this sign, most most bizarre …
Your nearest station is actually Oxford Circus
Do they think people are so stupid anyway, that they’re not going to rely on their own logic and simply go to one of the stations on either side … Oxford Circus or Holborn?
It seems that the TfL sign writing department have been getting a little slap-dash recently…
In recent months, we’ve seen Willesden Green relocated to the Bakerloo line and a mysterious Shepherd’s Bush Green station on the Central line for example. And of course we couldn’t mention signs without mentioning the number 15 now could we!
Perhaps, it seems, we should send a dictionary over to the sign-writers, after we happened, purely by chance, to spot this spelling mistake on one of our local bus stops at Henlys Corner…
We’ll leave you to dig out your dictionary (as we did to be sure we weren’t just seeing things) and have a delve for the correct spelling!