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Come on board

15th April 2014
 

Thanks to the nice people over at TfL Accessibility for giving us a plug today, they’ve been mentioning on their Twitter feed over the past few days the winners of their competition that they ran last year, of which we were one of the four winners.

TfL Accessibility

TfL Accessibility

Station Master does indeed have comprehensive accessibility information about all the Tube, Overground and DLR stations in London, telling you exactly how many steps there are, if there are lifts and/or escalators at each stations, and with 3D maps too of the stations so you can visualise what it’s going to be like to access before you even travel there!

Buy the App from the iTunes store here.

This post categorised under: Accessibility
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Mapping Stratford

14th April 2014
 

A lot of people ask us ‘How do you draw your 3D maps of the stations?’ and when we give them details of what software we use they say ‘No, no!’ as they mean how do we know how to draw them?

It’s because we go to each station in turn – with a notebook – and draw out a rough sketch of what its’s like, and then if we have to – go back and visit it again and fill in any details we might have missed and check that we’ve got it right.

We’re down to the last few maps to do (there are less than 10 left for us to draw to have completed all 270 tube stations) and one of the last tricky ones is Stratford! It’s got to be the most complicated station on the whole network, with two Tube lines, National Rail, The Overground and two different branches of the DLR all coming together.

And here’s how it looks in the very early stages of us designing it and putting it together. It’ll take a while, but it will be done!

Stratford 3D Map

Stratford 3D Map

This post categorised under: 3D Maps
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Untitled

12th April 2014
 

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.

paddington1

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’.

paddington2

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!

 

This post categorised under: Signage / Upgrades
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No more cash on buses

11th April 2014
 

It’s been coming for a while, but now a date has been set.  You’ll no longer be able to use cash to pay for bus fares as from Sunday July 6th from this year.  You will either have to use an Oyster card, or a bank card that also works as a contactless card, that will charge the same ‘cash’ fare as an Oyster card.

What happens if a contactless bank card fails to work though? In our experience, we see plenty of people wave an Oyster card at the reader on a bus, but it gives the error-beep rather than the ‘happy beep’ and the driver in most cases does nothing about it and the person rides the bus anyway.  Will it be easier to say ‘Oh my bank card should work’ and pretend a non-contactless card is a contactless one, as there are many differing designs of bank cards, but Oyster cards all look the same.

Contactless on buses

Contactless on buses

 

 

This post categorised under: Buses / Oyster
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Alternative Poetry

10th April 2014
 

Ah, you’ve all seen those badly-scanning poems on the tube that advise of things like to take your newspaper with you, yes? They irritate us just as much as you – don’t worry, but someone’s finally done something about it.

The Poke website have got a whole page with parodies of them – and whilst we haven’t actually seen one on a train yet, surely it can’t be long until someone actually does print one out and stick it up for real … right?

Don't be a twat

Don’t be a twat

This post categorised under: Fun
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Little things

9th April 2014
 

We like this from twitter user Ben Walters who today on his travels spotted that someone on the District Line at Westminster had taken it upon themselves to write and leave some uplifting post-it notes on the route diagram on the platform …

Happy Post It notes

Happy Post It notes

This post categorised under: Fun
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New barrier gates

7th April 2014
 

We used the Gospel Oak to Barking (GOBLIN) branch of the Overground on Friday’s charity tube challenge, and noticed two things of interest.

After a year of the new ramp being put in place, the temporary barriers are still across at the the top of the northern entrance/exit at Walthamstow Queen St. station – no one seems to quite know why they haven’t got on with opening it up, and it’s been like that for a year now.

Especially when ticketing work is well underway and in progress as we witnessed here at Leytonstone High Road where a new gateline is being installed, and might already be functional by the time that you read this.

New Ticket Barriers

New Ticket Barriers

This post categorised under: Overground
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World Tube Map

6th April 2014
 

With apologies to this being a link on the Daily Mail website (because it’s the only place we can find it), but a web developer called Chris Gray has made a global tube map – linking up all the countries in the world, with a Beck style map.

World Tube Map

World Tube Map

“Chris Gray, 47, came up with his whimsical idea for the map when watching a cricket match in Australia

I was sat in Melbourne after watching England lose another test and thought it would be great to nip over to England for Christmas and New Year and then go back to the sun, so I came up with the idea of a world Underground and started drawing it”.

Read http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2598871/Maps-reveal-WORLD-connected-using-global-underground-network.html.

 

This post categorised under: Alternative Tube Maps
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Charity Tube Challenge … Completed!

5th April 2014
 

Here’s what a group of twenty people look like having completed the Tube Challenge and visited all 270 stations in one day for the charity event Walk The Tube.

We started on the 05.15 out of Chesham, and completed 18 hours, 13 minutes and 29 seconds later.

We made a slight cheat in that we used the Overground to visit Kensington Olympia, because it’s hard enough scheduling that in on a regular challenge – getting it to work for a mass-group was never going to happen, but it was good enough for us!

Anyone fancy another one next year?

At the finish, at Heathrow Terminal 5

At the finish, at Heathrow Terminal 5

This post categorised under: Events / Fun
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Walk the Tube

4th April 2014
 

Hello! Today, we’re very much involved in a charity ‘All 270 Stations’ around the tube network attempt, it’s called Walk The Tube, because none of the connections between the stations or lines will involve running – it will all be walked.

Walk the tube

Walk the tube

There will be no attempt at setting a new record time, instead it’s a way to get a large group of people (20 of us) around the network just so that they can all say that they’ve been to all the stations on the network!

We are tweeting using the #walkthetube hashtag today and look out for us on your travels too!  We started this morning at Chesham at 5am, and should finish at Heathrow tonight at around 11pm.

This post categorised under: Events / Fun
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