Here’s a superb old railway map that we’d never seen before that we discovered this morning, whilst looking at the Project Mapping website. A 1960’s map of the railway network in Lomdon, showing lots of old parts of the railway system that now no longer exist! It’s really rather good.
Click on the image here for the full size version.
1960’s Map
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
And then, to finish off our Tube-quiz-map series of posts, there’s this one – Can you name the most commonly occurring words on the London Tube map? And it’s brilliant, and is Station Master’s favourite quiz – because it really stretches our brain to the point where we’ve never actually been able to complete it within the time limit allowed!
There’s no blank Tube map to help/guide you either, out top score is 48 out of 50, and then we always have the most of “OH OF COURSE!” when we see the last few that we couldn’t get … Have a play of it, it’s really rather good.
Commonest words on the tube map
If you think only having five minutes on the previous quiz was a little hard, and not enough time – then about about this, a fifteen minute variant over at iknowthetube.com
It’s NOT got the latest 2015 map update with the new Overground stations, but you do have more time to get as many stations as you possibly can. What’s nice about this too is that you get bonuses for getting (say) all the stations in outer-extremity zones, or a whole complete line. You get a total score at the end – separate from the number of stations you might have actually got.
This station master scored 2230 points, with 251 out of 368 stations found. Can you do better?
I know the tube
Following on from our previous post – the Buzzfeed quiz – those fiendish people then came up with another one – simply being How many stations can you type in, in under five minutes. And this Station Master’s high score is 113, can you beat that?
Going for ‘Bank‘ and ‘Oval‘ (rather than ‘Totteridge & Whetstone‘) obviously helps, and you’ll be delayed by your own mis-typing too, there’s no leniency for almost getting a station name right – you have to get it perfect. You have 5 mins! GO!!
Five minute quiz
It feels like there have been a lot of Tube map quizzes doing the rounds on the Internet recently. Disappointingly, no one has been sending around the link to what is possibly our most favourite ever Tube map quiz, so we thought we’d feature a few that we’ve stumbled upon recently, and finish with what we think is the most fiendish Tube map quiz ever.
First up, is Buzzfeed’s ‘How well do you know the Tube map‘, which incorrectly states that there are 401 stations on the network (there are 408) but it least it does cover the new Overground extension – which makes it tricky because do you honestly know where ‘Clapton’ is for example, when looking at a blank Tube map?
That’s what you have to do – you get presented with a blank Tube map, and a station name will pop up, can you correctly click on the blank map where that station is?
Buzzfeed Quiz
So it’s not everyday that you see … this!
It’s a Northern line 1995 stock train running west through Covent Garden on its way to Northfields depot. It was being transferred along the Piccadilly line for brake testing on the test track at South Ealing, several units have passed through here recently – they get there as there’s a curve of track (called the Kings Cross Loop), that runs between the northbound part of the Northern line to the east of Euston, that curves round and joins the northbound of the Piccadilly line just south of Kings Cross. There’s then a crossover which allows the train to go over to the southbound.
Photo taken (and used with kind permission) of Jack Gordon – there’s more on his Flickr page here.
We’ve long been subscribers of the excellent CityTransportInfo on YouTube, where there’s more video of trains and stations than you can shake a stick at. But the videos that we really like that get put up are the ‘contrasts’ ones that show you how a station used to look many years ago, cut with footage of how it looks now.
One that recently got put up, is that of Westminster. Think of the sub-surface lines now at that station – they got rebuilt when the Jubilee Line Extension came through in 1999, so can you remember how it used to look?
An old Victorian ticket hall, original tiling, wooden banisters – it’s very similar to St. James’s Park and Temple – with one big distinction – it’s in the open! Daylight streams in from above, unlike now. Give it a play for a fascinating look of how it used to be.
A reminder … that there’s going to be no Victoria Line past Seven Sisters up to Walthamstow for three weeks, starting from Saturday August 8th.
This is so that work can be done on the line that will let the Underground run up to 36 trains in the peaks hours, so that trains will be more frequent than ever. Unfortunately, it will also mean that there will be a slightly reduced number of trains running on the line between Brixton and Seven Sisters, so that it could be even more congested than normal, to the point where TfL have produced this map (below).
More over on their official website here.
Victoria Line Blockade
Some great new British Movietone shorts have been uploaded to YouTube, many featuring the Underground, like the ones we found below.
Check out the “Tube” and “Underground” related videos here and here.