There are still a few DLR stations that we haven’t done yet for the App in terms of 3D maps, so we’re now getting round to doing these for a release later this year.
In doing so, we’re now experimenting with drawing in the trains and carriages themselves so that you can visualise the station even better.
Here’s the 3D diagram that’s a work-in-progress for Westferry DLR for example.
Westferry 3D Map
The new version of Station Master is coming (we’re still waiting for Apple to finish reviewing it), but until then, the new Exit the Tube is out and updated, featuring …
The new exit data for Tottenham Court Road station! (Currently the only iOS App to have this correct).
Compatibility with the full iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus screen sizes (Again, currently the only iOS exits app to be doing that, and we’ll be doing more work on utilising the extra screen space on those devices in the future).
Correct exit positions for the ‘S-Stock’ style trains on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines. (And yes, we’re still the only iOS exit App to have that correct data and have been for a while).
Has anyone seen the driving cab to this train? Tucked away in the sidings of Northfields depot by Boston Manor station was this Piccadilly Line train with a noticeable carriage missing!
No cab
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?
With Tottenham Court Road now effectively being a completely new station, we were down there first thing yesterday morning, counting the steps, making a note of the facilities, and of course sketching out a new 3D map.
We’ve incorporated diagrammatic Tube carriages too for the first time to give you a better feel for where the trains stop in relation to the exits!
The App update will be submitted to Apple this week and will go live once it’s been through Apple’s review process.
New Tottenham Court Road
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.
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!
So if you missed Station Master Geoff on The Fanatics last night, we’ve got a cheeky upload of it here on YouTube, the whole show with the adverts taken out – test your own Tube knowledge!
Station Master Geoff pops up on a new Sky 1 quiz show tonight, The Fanatics as he pitches his Underground knowledge against two other fanatical contestants – a Doctor Who devotee and a Boxing aficionado.
It’s on tonight at 8pm, and you’ll have to watch it to see who wins …
Geoff the Fanatic
So we saw the film ‘Paddington’ over the holiday period, and were delighted to see there was a bit of filming on the London Underground where the famous bear grapples with the escalators at … Westbourne Oak Tube station.
A combination of Westbourne Park and Royal Oak? It would seem so! And they are the two stations immediately after Paddington station when heading west on the Hammersmith & City line.
Of course it was actually filmed at Maida Vale, something we spotted the split second it appeared on the screen, with its distinctive exterior; and, after tweeting about it, a nice man called Adrian Scottow got in touch as he’s a local and took pictures of when they were filming the scenes back in November 2013.
Click on the image below to be taken through to his Flickr gallery to see more!
Westbourne Oak station