Now that a large area on the new Tube map is a Zone 2/3 blob, it’s become a little more confusing. We hope that this helps clear things up …
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New Tottenham Court Road
The the new entrance at Tottenham Court Road has opened up (and Central Line trains are stopping again) at it looks magnificent.
TCR
This way to the platforms
London Bridge is undergoing all sorts of construction work at the moment, leading to it very easy to get confused about which way to go to get to your platform and get the train. But it doesn’t help when platforms 1-3 are through this impossibly small gap – must be a squeeze to fit everyone through there at the height of the rush-hour.
This way!
London’s Underground Languages
There is a great Tube-themed video article on the BBC website today where they’ve followed the route of the Victoria line up on the streets, whilst mirroring the journey with a shot from the cab underground, and spoken/interviews with people along the way to reflect the wide diversity of people and languages along the route.
“The video below combines footage shot from a Victoria Line train, synchronised with its route above ground. The soundtrack echoes the most widely spoken language, after English, at each stage of the route. The underground journey takes just over 30 minutes, but we have condensed the footage into three minutes.”
Underground Languages
London Reconnections Magazine
This looks good – very good. Those nice people over at London Reconnections an essential website for considered opinion on the world have railways have today announced that they’re launching a magazine.
That’s right! A physical paper/printed presence (not just online) that looks gorgeous, so you have articles to read and keep forever in that format.
They say that “Buying a subscription to LR magazine will not only help us build up a financial framework that’ll keep this site going from strength to strength, but you will also get an absolutely gorgeous, perfect bound magazine in return.”
Have a read over on their website for full details
London Reconnections
Ten Years On …
Today is the tenth anniversary of the terrorist bombs that hit London – and the Underground network, back on the 7th July 2005.
TfL have announced that there will be a one-minutes silence across the network at 11.30am – Not quite sure how that’s going to work on trains in tunnels, but we’re sure it will be brilliantly observed at all stations across the network.
The BBC news website has been posting some amazing stories and coverage from people still obviously affected by the event ten years ago.
Memorial
Hello new TCR!
It’s new! Its shiny! It’s the spanking new Tottenham Court Road station! It actually had a sneaky early opening yesterday late afternoon on Sunday, but officially it didn’t actually open until 5am this morning. Now just the Northern Line only, but it looks like this …
New Tottenham Court Road station
More photos in the album at Station Master Geoff’s Flickr gallery.
Leave your Oyster card here
Drop your Oyster card here
We’ve not seen one of these before anywhere else on the network until we walked past this one at King’s Cross the other day – targeted presumably at people leaving London on the Eurostar.
Rather then leave unspent money on an Oyster card (and apparently there’s quite a lot of it sloshing around the system) you can drop your unwanted Oyster off here and any money on it will be taken back (including the £3 deposit, we wondered?) and given to the Railway Children charity.
We haven’t seen them anywhere else, but I wonder if there are also similar boxes down at Heathrow airport too …
No Angel
We were amused to see that the lovely charitable cause Christmas Tree at Angel station… has got a star on top of it! Surely the Christmas tree at Angel should have an Angel on it! Or maybe the one at Star Lane (on the DLR) has got it instead, and the two got swapped round?
Angel Christmas Tree
Gloucester Road reopens
Piccadilly Line trains haven’t been stopping for the best part of the whole year, but on schedule this week, trains started stopping again with the completion of the new lifts, looking all, er… new and shiny as they do here. This is Gloucester Road – where you can now use the Piccadilly Line again!
Gloucester Road Lifts