Lots of these posters at stations today all around the network remembering Bob Crow whose funeral was today.
Bob Crow
S-Stock at Ealing
23rd March 2014
Another view from the Acton Depot last weekend, where the open day allowed us to wander down to the fence at the far end where you can get a view through it of some building work going on.
Depot Extension
The metal extension to the Ealing Common depot can only be because the S7 stock trains are longer, and so they need to extend the building a little so that it can accommodate the length of the new trains. S7’s are coming to Ealing!
S7 at Ealing Common
And as if to back it up, we then spotted an S7 hidden away as well behind a regular ‘D’ Stock District Line train.
What was West Harrow?
22nd March 2014
It was the LTMuseum Acton Depot open weekend last Saturday and Sunday and even though we’ve been several times before, there’s always an incentive to go down and have a look around and find something new – which we do with ease.
This time, up on the mezzanine area (our favourite bit!) with the old maps and signs, we discovered a tube map where the ‘West Harrow’ station name had been screwed on as a metal plate – leaving us wondering, what was underneath?
All our digging around on the internet, can’t find any reference as to what West Harrow might have been called before, as it’s always been known as that as far as we’re aware! So what is beneath this plate?
West Harrow used to be called … what?
20 Minutes interchange
21st March 2014
Change at Charing Cross
After yesterday’s scribbled on signage, we found another subtle – but possibly more important example today.
With the Bakerloo & Northern Line not stopping at Embankment station, signs are advising people to walk to Charing Cross from Embankment instead to pick up services there. What isn’t clear though is that they’ve temporarily made the two stations an official Out of Station Interchange (OSI) as long as that is, you don’t spend more than 20 minutes dithering about between the two stations to make the change.
Something that perhaps got missed off the official poster, so someone has scribbled it on, in biro as an afterthought.
For a complete list of OSI’s there’s a list on the excellent Oyster-Rail page.
Twenty minutes
Just write on the sign …
20th March 2014
Aldgate East at the weekend, and due to engineering works there were no Hammersmith & City services running. So you get a neatly written sign or poster explaining your alternative routes?
Errr, no – instead someone has got their dry-marker out, and decided to scribble all over the existing signage. Not easy to read TfL, not easy to read at all …
It’s like a whiteboard
Working Timetables … Online at last
19th March 2014
The WTT (Working Timetable) is the stuff of legends in LU/TfL circles. They show the exact time and number of each train movement, and for many years TfL didn’t like to admit that they existed.
Then there was a phase where you could order a copy by request under the Freedom of Information Act, but they made you go and pick up paper copies (unbound) from them at 55 Broadway in person.
Then they denied that electronic copies in PDF format existed, even though we’d seen them. Even within TfL, not all employees could see them – on their internal system you had to have be granted specific permissions to gain access to the share/folder where they were.
Eventually via the What Do They Know website, people were able to request to receive them, and it’s maybe because they were inundated with requests that they’ve finally relented …
We have no idea why they tried to keep them so secret for so long, but all we do know now is that with the coming of the new TfL website – they are finally publishing working timetables online, for download in PDF format – finally! At this page here.
Working Timetables Download Page
C-Stock Explorer
18th March 2014
With the last few C-Stock trains left on the network, you can now buy tickets on the LTMuseum website for one of two ‘send off’ events to say farewell to these trains.
The first event is on Sunday 13th April, and will travel on parts of the network that it doesn’t usually go along – including parts of the Metropolitan and Piccadilly Line. More details and how to book are over here on the LTMuseum Site.
C-Stock explorer
There is also then rumour of another event taking place later on in the year on the 29th June, where the last ever C-Stock will run over lines long associated with this type of train – from Hammersmith, to Moorgate, Wimbledon and Barking.
We suspect there are two tours because of the limited numbers of seats available on a C-Stock train, and they don’t want anyone standing – seated passengers only – on these tours.
Not Just Leinster Gardens
17th March 2014
It’s becoming less of a secret now about the false façade at Leinster Garden – all because the underground dug its way through leaving the anomaly in its wake.
But here’s another architectural structure of note – all due to a tube line down below. Get out at South Kensington and walk two minutes around the corner to Thurloe Square, and you’ll find this – a house on the South Terrace that narrows to just a few feet in width.
Thurloe Gardens
It’s a real house, someone lives inside – and there are rooms which are wider at one end and much narrower at the other. And if we move to the right of the bins and peer over the wall we can see why – the cut and cover District and Circle lines are behind the house down below to the east of South Kensington station.
We believe they were in place before the house on the South Terrace was built – and it was simply squeezed in, the builders preferring to have a narrower house rather than a space with no structure altogether.
There are a few places like this on the Underground, and so we’ve started putting a map together of them all showing you where they all are …
Tube Fashion
15th March 2014
Another Saturday, another alternative tube map .. this time a freshly served up new one as the Stylight website brings us the fashionista tube map.
“All the fashionistas flock from Covent Norgaarden station to get to London Fashion Week’s Somerset House, and after a long day of shopping in the West End, they relax with a drink in the Jimmy Choo-dge Street area, before catching a train home a few stops down the Conde Northern line at Waterlooloo Guinness – London: style capital of the world.”
Fasionista Tube Map
Wimbleware 7’s
14th March 2014
We took a trip out on the Wimbleware branch yesterday to check up on the progress of the roll-out of the S-Stock to the line. It’s served by eight ‘C’ stocks normally, and so we made a note of how many were still being run by C’s and how many new S7’s we saw.
S7 at Fulham Broadway
Four is the answer … although we did spot a C Stock in the sidings at Parsons Green as well, which looked all fired up and ready to go if needed.
Which means that the days of the ‘C’ stock, really are getting close to being numbered! Any day now, there will be an announcement for a rail tour for the final run of these units, the S’s will be on the Edgware Road to Wimbledon line, which means they’ll then start to make an appearance on the rest of the District Line proper …
