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Way Out

With the Northern Line escalators currently out of action at King’s Cross and passengers being diverted the long way round, there are lots of posters up on the platforms to say ‘This way..’ and take you to where you want to go.

Except that here, the arrow pointing to the right is odd, because visible to the left is the staircase that takes you up to the Piccadilly Line. If you follow the sign, it will take you at least five minutes to get to the Piccadilly platforms, however, if you take the stairs that you can see in the background of this photo, it will take you 30 seconds!

Not this way

Embankment Re-opens

New Embankment Escalator

Embankment station re-opened last week on the Northern and Bakerloo lines and so we popped down to have a look at the new escalators. We noted that it’s only some of the escalators that have been replaced, others are still the same old ones.

Amusingly, the down escalator to the southbound Northern Line was already broken when we paid a visit, with many men from OTIS standing round in their bright orange jackets wondering how they were going to make it work again.

New tiling

Many of the passageways have also had a complete facelift, with nice new shiny cream tiles along many of the corridors and the stairwells, so it looks all clean and new, although other parts of the station could still do with a scrub – the northbound Bakerloo line platform here looks rather dull and uninspiring,

But the best bit the very best bit – is some of the new signage that they’ve installed, and a blatant error that appears!

Willesden Green is now on the Bakerloo Line!

Wrong!

On the Bakerloo Line maps they’ve put ‘Willesden Green’ instead of Willesden Junction, which is hilarious … Willesden Green of course is on the Jubilee Line.

So someone has had some ‘JCTN’ stickers made up (not even the full word!) to cover them up, but they’ve missed one and we found where it was …

Escalators / Signage / Upgrades — — 07 Nov 14

New Central Line Station

Hanger Lane Sign

TfL have been sneaky buggers and gone and snuck in a brand new station on the Central Line without telling anyone!

In fact, it had us confused for a moment, as we thought they’d connected up the Central Line to a Hammersmith & City / Circle Line station – but that’s Shepherd’s Bush Market, but no! This is a brand new station.

What are we talking about? Well the platform signage at Hanger Lane tells the tale, here are the signs on the platform from a distance.

Hanger Lane Signage

Then, when you get up close, you realise something a little odd about one of the station names – that’s right, instead of ‘Shepherd’s Bush’, they’ve indicated that the Central Line stops at ‘Shepherd’s Bush Green‘ which is new to us!

Shepherds Bush Green on the Central Line

It’s not the first time that this has happened – LU have form, for adding in the word ‘Green’, there used to be a sign (see it here) at Mile End station indicating that the District Line stopped at a station called Putney Green. They removed it in 2010. I wonder how long it’ll take them to correct this one at Hanger Lane …

(Thanks to Shrey Puranik for the heads up on this)

Update – We’ve heard on Twitter that there might be a sign like this at Chancery Lane too, we’ll pop down later for a photo…

Fun / Signage — — 01 Aug 14

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

Signage / Tube — — 10 Jun 14

Central Stickers

There are now some nice big bright stickers on Central Line carriages, in bold red pointing out the fact that trains aren’t currently stopping at Bond Street, by removing its connection blob.

No connection

What we can’t work out though is why they felt the sticker needed to cover up Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Lancaster Gate and Marble Arch as well when absolutely nothing map-wise has changed about these stations.

With connection

Map / Posters / Signage / Tube — — 22 May 14

Untitled

Station Master passed through Paddington yesterday (on the H&C/Circle Line platforms) and couldn’t help but spot the signs on the platforms that were put in place when the S-Stock were starting to be rolled out. It was to notify passengers the C-Stock trains (being shorter in length) wouldn’t go all the way to the back of the platform.

Well, with all the C-Stocks gone now, TfL could really do with taking the signs down, but something even more bizarre happened whilst we were there – what looked like a Station Supervisor, was showing around what looked like two new members of staff, and we clearly overheard him say ‘The C Stock trains don’t come all the way down here, only the new S-Stock ones do’.

Errm, perhaps someone should tell him that all the C Stock trains are now gone, and a passenger train with that stock will never stop there again!

Signage / Upgrades — — 12 Apr 14

Daytripper

Abbey Road Sign

When Abbey Road station first opened and we went down there (to make a video) one of the first observations we made was of course that you might get tourists going there thinking it’s where the famous Beatles’ Abbey Road recording studio is located – looking for the zebra crossing to replicate the famous album cover.

But it’s not – and so to help and point this out, TfL have installed a sign laden with Beatles song titles, to put people back on the train to the Jubilee Line and get them to St. John’s Wood – the nearest tube station to the famous Abbey Road crossing.

Last night, we were passing through and couldn’t resist jumping out to grab a photo of the sign.

Signage — — 30 Mar 14

What was West Harrow?

It was the LTMuseum Acton Depot open weekend last Saturday and Sunday and even though we’ve been several times before, there’s always an incentive to go down and have a look around and find something new – which we do with ease.

This time, up on the mezzanine area (our favourite bit!) with the old maps and signs, we discovered a tube map where the ‘West Harrow’ station name had been screwed on as a metal plate – leaving us wondering, what was underneath?

All our digging around on the internet, can’t find any reference as to what West Harrow might have been called before, as it’s always been known as that as far as we’re aware! So what is beneath this plate?

West Harrow used to be called … what?

Signage — — 22 Mar 14

20 Minutes interchange

Change at Charing Cross

After yesterday’s scribbled on signage, we found another subtle – but possibly more important example today.

With the Bakerloo & Northern Line not stopping at Embankment station, signs are advising people to walk to Charing Cross from Embankment instead to pick up services there. What isn’t clear though is that they’ve temporarily made the two stations an official Out of Station Interchange (OSI) as long as that is, you don’t spend more than 20 minutes dithering about between the two stations to make the change.

Something that perhaps got missed off the official poster, so someone has scribbled it on, in biro as an afterthought.

For a complete list of OSI’s there’s a list on the excellent Oyster-Rail page.

Twenty minutes

Signage — — 21 Mar 14

Just write on the sign …

Aldgate East at the weekend, and due to engineering works there were no Hammersmith & City services running. So you get a neatly written sign or poster explaining your alternative routes?

Errr, no – instead someone has got their dry-marker out, and decided to scribble all over the existing signage. Not easy to read TfL, not easy to read at all …

It’s like a whiteboard

Signage — — 20 Mar 14

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