Station Master App

S7 Rollout Continues

We’ve been watching with interest the amount of new S7 trains that are coming into the network, replacing the old C-Stock on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines.

Three more C Stock units are being scrapped this weekend – leaving only a couple left on the lines. When they get replaced in the next couple of weeks, attention will then switch to the Edgware Road to Wimbledon branch of the network, which is run by just eight units.

For us, it’s meant having to go back and visit a whole load of stations again to get the new exact carriage and door positions all over again for stations where this has changed. This usually occurs where the exit is at the rear of the train and the nearest exit is no longer in the sixth carriage, but in the seventh – as these new trains have an extra carriage.

The new data won’t be in the App until the next update, after which we’ll switch our attention to the rest of the District Line – as the new trains get rolled out on the rest of the line into 2015 – and that will mean a major upheaval of the data for us all over again.

With the extra carriage making the train longer, we expected to find more stations where the whole train didn’t fit, but the only places it really affected were on the western side of ‘the Circle’ – namely Paddington, Bayswater, Notting Hill Gate and High Street Kensington are all stations where not all the doors in the rear carriage open.

Tube — — 12 Jan 14

TubeSquared

We stumbled again upon Chromaroma the other day – the game you play with your Oyster card that lets you score points as you travel around London touching in and out at tube stations completing ‘missions’ and generally trying to be the most travelled person in town.

But we never really liked doing it because it only worked with Pay as you Go users (no good for us Oyster travelcard holders), and also because you had to give them your username and password to the Oyster system, so that they could scrape your journey info from TfL and bring it into their own system.

Which is why we’ve been busy trying to complete something more straightforward – checking into every tube station using Foursquare.

Geofftech has got two lists on the site covering all the stations – split because on Foursquare, there is a maximum limit of 200 places, so it’s not possible to have all 270 tube stations on one list, so below the ‘Zone 1’ list has had a few Zone 2 stations put into it, to allow the ‘rest of…’ to max out at 200.

We’re now just two check-ins aways for completing all the tube stations in London. In San Francisco (where Foursquare originated) you get the ‘Subway Rat’ badge for travelling to all the station on the BART. We suspect nothing will happen when you tick off all 270 tube stations, but wouldn’t it be great if London had an equivalent ‘Tube Badge’, once you’d checked into all of them?

Foursquare List – Tube Challenge (200 tube stations outside of Zone 1)
Foursquare List – Zone 1 Stations (The other 70 Stations)

Foursquare List – DLR Challenge (All 45 DLR Stations)
Foursquare List – Overground Challenge (All 82 Stations)

Tube — — 10 Jan 14

No Bakerloo or Northern at Embankment

A reminder that work started today at Embankment station to replace the old escalators down to both the Bakerloo and Northern Line platforms, meaning that from today – and until November when it is projected work will be finished, only District and Circle line trains will be stopping at Embankment station. This is actually the only new thing that we’ve spotted on the latest tube map, everything else looks the same as before!

TfL point out on their website, that it’s literally a 60 second walk up or down Villiers street between Embankment station and Charing Cross meaning you can get to your Bakerloo and Northern Line services there instead.

Detailed LU Track Map

Ah, you have to love the Freedom of Information Act, under which large companies and corporations are obliged to release certain information to the public upon request.

The latest gem to emerge is from a request to LU/TfL here, where someone had requested a detailed signalling and track plan map.

They don’t quite meet the requirements with their response (if you read it carefully you can see why they don’t have to), but they do link to a rather fabulous – and previously unseen by this Station Master – map of the Underground, a small section of which we’ve got for you here.

Follow this link for the full map, but be aware it’s 17MB in size, so will take a longer time to download on slow connections.

Pedants will note that it’s a little out of date where in concerns non-Tube lines, if you look closely at Stratford it still shows the old ‘Silverlink’ North London Line track which has now been replaced by the DLR. You might argue too, that the Thameslink track to Barbican shouldn’t be shown, as this service no longer runs and is being turned into Crossrail, but it’s still a beautifully detailed map that even shows disused stations and unfinished ones (such as Bull & Bush on the Northern Line).

LU Track Plan Map

Map / Tube — — 08 Jan 14

Tube Kultura

A small plug for a tube-related event taking place the week after next. Andy Green from www.tubespiration.com has oganised the event ‘Tube Kultura’ feature a mixture of guests with London Underground themed interests.

The ‘Kultura’ name comes from ‘PechaKucha’, a presentation style that originated in Tokyo. Instead of long, rambling presentations, people are invited to make short snappt points – everything summed up in just six minutes, which tends to leave people with a bigger impression – and if they want to know more they can talk to you afterwards.

Andy’s London event includes the man who created a tube map based on taste, a tube worker that records sounds on the underground and makes songs from them, a poet, and also someone familiar to us all – the current record holder for travelling to all London tube stations in the fastest time possible.

The event takes places at Toynbee Studios (nearest tube: Aldgate East) on Wednesday 15th January. Tickets are £5 and should be bought in advance from this website here.

Events / Tube — — 04 Jan 14

Piccadilly to Ealing Broadway … permanently?

Piccadilly Line to Ealing Broadway

A thought that’s been discussed before but one worth mentioning again here on the blog is what happens when the S7 stock trains are rolled out onto the District Line.

Let’s look at a couple of things that have been in previous posts here on this blog. We know that 1973 stock Piccadilly trains can run to Ealing Broadway ok, and we know that S7 District trains are running in and out of Olympia in a regular hourly service.

So what happens when all the D-Stock trains are replaced? When the current District trains are all replaced by S-Stock (by 2015) it raises up an interesting thought – why not swap round the western end of the District and Piccadilly Lines.

The Piccadilly could then concentrate on going to Heathrow, with a smaller ‘spur’ off to Ealing Broadway. If there’s any disruption in service, Ealing Broadway could almost be considered an reversing siding for Picc trains to turn and come back again.

The District – using S-Stock – would then go on up to Rayners Lane and Uxbridge meaning that the same style stock would be used on the stretch of the line – rather than mixed height (as we have at the moment), meaning that it would be so much easier to make that stretch of the tube map have step-free from platform to the train, with just one type of train.

But running a District service from Upminster to Uxbridge is a loooong way, which is where Olympia comes into play. You could have a District Line service that runs from Uxbridge to High Street Kensington, and an Upminster service that runs into Olympia, thus replacing the odd ‘shuttle’ that used to/still does take place between these two stations.

You might therefore see the District Line completely changing its service patterns to look like this:

Uxbridge to High Street Kensington
Wimbledon to Upminster
Wimbledon to Edgware Road
Uxbridge to Mansion House
Richmond to Upminster
Olympia to Plaistow

Future services / Map / Tube — — 02 Jan 14

Piccadilly to Ealing Broadway

With some large scale maintenance work taking place on the District tracks between the 27th and 30th December, there were no District services for a few days west of South Kensington. Edgware Road, Wimbledon, Richmond and Ealing Broadway were all without service … almost.

The regular rail replacment bus services ran, but an extra fun thing happened out west .. where at Ealing Broadway, some Piccadilly Line trains were diverted to run in and out of Ealing Broadway instead, meaning the rare chance to see a 1973 stock train where you wouldn’t normally.

Normal Piccadilly services ran too, but the trains coming out of Ealing Broadway then additionally made the stops that District trains would, meaning that trains also irregularly stopped at Chiswick Park, Stamford Brook and Ravenscourt Park too. A sign up gave departure times as being 00, 18, 29 and 48 minutes past the hour, but the train we got in left 3 minutes early at a quarter-past, just as we were about to snap a few more photos.

At South Kensington, confusion reigned a little as the platform that normally serves westbound trains only, saw District Line train arrive .. and then reverse heading out eastbound instead.

This was of course a little confusing for passengers waiting on the regular eastbound platform … where no trains were running at all. A frustrated member of platform staff stood on the westbound side announcing into a PA that no trains would be leaving from the regular eastbound side … but almost everyone ignored her. Made we wonder why they didn’t just have that person stand over the regular eastbound platform, actually talking and telling people instead.

Secret trains / Tube — — 01 Jan 14

Bonus Olympia Trains

S7 at Olympia

So with TfL/LU trying to run down Olympia by stealth, by hardly running any regular trains to it, and making it very confusing to passengers and even train operators when the service is running, it’s intriguing to see some bonus services running there.

Normally there are just 9 trains to/from Olympia, a few services before 7am in the morning, and then two trains in the evening that arrive and then depart.

Until that is, the new S7 stock turned up, and now it seems that Olympia is being used as the turning point for two trains (making regular trips throughout the day) for driver training purposes.

So if you want to get a rare service into Olympia, and on the new S Stock trains as a bonus, the times are (Monday to Fridays only) as follows:

Westbound from Earl’s Court to Olympia at:
11:00, 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, 19:37, 21:00, 21:33, 22:59

All trains leave from Platform 3, having come from either Plaistow or Barking, and are scheduled to arrive at Olympia three minutes later. They then wait a few minutes and leave as follows:

Eastbound from Olympia to either Plaistow or Barking at:
10:21, 11:12, 12:21, 13:12, 14:21, 15:21, 19:12, 19:49, 21:21, 21:52

S7 at Olympia

Secret trains / Tube — — 31 Dec 13

Olympia Map

As Olympia has had quite a re-vamp with the gateline and the new segregated footbridge, we’ve updated the 3D Station Map for the station which now reflects all of this. It will be included in the next version (1.7.1) of Station Master which we submitted to Apple today.

Here’s a sneak preview of what the new Olympia map looks like – Click on the image below for a larger/full size version.

3D Kensington (Olympia) Map

Whilst we were there, we spotted some irregular train service patterns too, but more on that in tomorrow’s post…

3D Maps / Overground / Tube — — 30 Dec 13

Next train indicators on the Piccadilly

This appears to be new … for many months (going into years now), there have been ‘Next train’ Dot Matrix Indicators on the Piccadilly Line up to Rayners Lane, but since the day they were installed they have either never been activated, or just never worked.

(The situation at Ealing Common remains the same – on the eastbound platform, you can hear and then see the train pulling into the station before it even flashes up on the board, and on the westbound platform it often gets out of sync so a District train pulls in and says it’s going to Rayners Lane…)

Until recently, we spotted that the ones at North Ealing are now working! And travelling up the line a little it appears the ones at Park Royal and Alperton are now also in use, but at Sudbury Town and and Hill they are not – still, having them now working at three stations is better than having them not work at all, and maybe it’s a sign that the others will be activated shortly …

North Ealing Dot Matrix Indicator

Good Service / Tube — — 27 Dec 13

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