Station Master App

Tubewhacking

3rd March 2014

This is the best tube related thing we’ve seen in ages. We love this site.

The classic St. Johns’ Wood is the only station not to contain any of the letters from the word ‘Mackerel’ is a long-term established tube fact, as (was recently discovered) that Woodford is the only station not to contain any letters from the word ‘Stickleback’.

We mentioned this a while ago with some other variants we know, but now there’s a site… this simple beautiful site by Ben Green which let’s you ‘Whack’ your own words to see which tube station may be the only only not to contain those letters.

TubeWhacking

And it’s not just the London Tube, but it works for the Paris Metro, German U-Bahn, and even has a ‘Wombling’ option for London, to include Overground stations too. Genius!

This post categorised under: Fun
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Clash of the Cards

2nd March 2014

Station Master got an interesting piece of mail in the post today from his credit card who informed him that their Oyster-enabled Credit Card (OnePulse) was being phased out and would no longer be valid for use after June of this year.

“It’s being replaced with a new Freedom Credit Card!” said the literature – which sounded a bit close to a ‘Freedom Pass’ for my liking (we’re not that old .. yet), but also highlighted the fact that it would still be able to be used for Contactless journeys on buses (as already) and tube journeys when the system is enabled later in the year.

Card Clash

But TfL are worried that this is going to lead to Card Clash – so much so that signs have been appearing at tube stations already, even though the system isn’t due to go live yet. If you have an Oyster card AND contactless card in the same wallet, and you don’t get an read error on the gate, you could easily fall foul of touching in with one, and touching out with another – leading you to have an incomplete journey on BOTH cards, which (at peak hours) could cost you £8.50 for each – seventeen quid in total! Well done TfL for pointing this out in advance, but it’s not going to stop it happening, and there are going to be some very angry people when this happens to them.

The solution? Keep your Oyster card in a separate wallet (like, we already do) and not in your main wallet or purse, to avoid the clash happening…

This post categorised under: Oyster
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If the truth be told

1st March 2014

BuzzFeed who are normally so good at just propagating other people’s material, did something unusual this week – they created and distributed their own tube map variant, based on “What you would actually truthfully find at each stations…”. Click on it for the larger version.

Truthful Tube Map

This post categorised under: Alternative Tube Maps
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A real good service

28th February 2014

One of the things which we like to grumble about the most (and we hear others do too – including drivers) is the fabled ‘Good Service‘ announcement which plagues our eardrums on platforms and stations, and often gets automatically announced by a system which isn’t good enough to react quickly to situations on the tube where it’s gone wrong.

Nothing is more annoying when tube travelling than (say) the time when we waited 23 minutes for a Piccadilly Line train whilst being told several times that there was a ‘Good Service‘ when there clearly wasn’t.

Which is why we love this – Andy Drizen’s Tube Map Live. Yes we’re plugging another App which we have no problem doing here if it’s one we really love, and we really love this one. Andy first produced the excellent Tube Tracker, and then subsequently came up with Tube Map Live, which plots the positions of the trains (from a feed from TfL) on a tube map.

The result? You can actually see for yourself the gap between the trains on any particular line, and thus judge for yourself if there really IS a ‘Good Service‘ or not.

Tube Map Live!

Instead of the wasted money on the ‘rainbow board’ in every station bleating on about there being a good service, how great would it be if all stations actually had a display like this, showing you how the trains were actually running. In the meantime, download the App (it’s free!), and watch them for yourselves. Sometimes we watch them, just for fun – even if we’re not taking a journey anywhere!

This post categorised under: App update / Good Service / Map / Tube
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Circle Time

27th February 2014

You know how Circle Line trains are the rarest thing on the tube? Well that’s because they run to their own special schedule … so special that they’re out of sync with the rest of the Underground – as proved here at Aldgate station. Another thing to fix please, TfL before you start trying to give us a 24-hour tube service!

Aldgate Clocks

We later found out that the Circle Line clock (on the right) was actually correct, and it was the Met Line clock that was wrong! Photo courtesy of @squarewheels_

This post categorised under: Broken Tube
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Change at Canning Town

26th February 2014

We’re not sure how long it’s been there, but we just got round to noticing that there is now an electronic sign at the bottom of the main escalators at Canning Town to tell you if the next train to Woolwich or Beckton is leaving from the upper, or lower platforms.

It’s a shame it’s a small electronic sign though, tilted in the wrong direction, when what would be better would be a LARGE sign saying “Next train…” and then an arrow pointing in which direction to the platform you should take, but it’s better than nothing.

When the station first opened, there was no way of knowing and it was pot luck whether you shuffled to the right platforms or not, so at least this finally helps. It’s a bit off if you’re coming BACK from either Woolwich or Beckton though and your train is destined for Stratford but you want to go to Bank or Tower Gateway. When you change at Canning Town do you stay on the platform you came in on, or do you shuffle down to the board to check the display? It’s still a bit confusing …

Canning Town next DLR

This post categorised under: DLR / Next Train Indicators
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New Exit at London Bridge

25th February 2014

New Signage

The proliferation of new style ‘Yellow on Black’ signs that first appeared at King’s Cross a while ago are now starting to spread to the rest of the Underground. London Bridge, we noticed when passing through the other day, is now full of them. We’d go so far to say that there are too many and they are distracting from all the regular signage that you’re used to.

But we also spotted something else – a new entrance/exit to the ticket hall! It’s linked to The Shard, and at the moment, it’s just an arcade of retail outlets which have yet to be let out, so there’s nothing really going on, but it is marginally quicker to go this way if you want to exit by The Shard.

New entrance/exit to ticket hall

This post categorised under: Infrastructure / Ticket Office
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Charing Cross mismatch

24th February 2014

While out and about on the Underground this week we noticed this at Charing Cross on the northbound Northern Line platform:

The hatchings on the platform are accompanied by this sign on the wall:

And sure enough when our train arrived the leading set of doors didn’t open here.

If our memory serves correctly this has always been the case with the 95-stock on the Northern Line, so what’s going on here?

Well it all turns out it’s to do with the recent commissioning of what’s known as ‘NMA4’ or ‘Northern Migration Area 4’. This is part (4 of 6) of the project to implement Transmission Based Train Control or ‘TBTC’ on the Northern Line – which allows the trains to be driven automatically, as is already the case on the Victoria, Central and Jubilee lines. Presently on the Northern Line, the High Barnet branch and Chalk Farm to Oval are running with automation.

When NMA4 went live recently, the stopping point at Charing Cross was moved back by 2.5 metres (for reasons unknown to us at present), however the doors and the passenger announcements (CELIA) are driven by the Train Management System (TMS) which needs a software upgrade to take this into account, but this won’t be updated until around June 2014.

This post categorised under: Tube
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Trains on the brain

23rd February 2014

Some people have accused our minds of looking a bit like this … we can’t see it ourselves, personally… Heh.

Tube Brain

This post categorised under: Alternative Tube Maps / Fun
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Meanwhile …

22nd February 2014

Piccadilly Line trains are still going to Ealing Broadway, supposedly. With the rest of the Piccadilly Branch up to Rayners Lane finally have their “Next train…” DMI’s turned on, I’m really holding out and hoping that someone is going to fix this, and perhaps give us some actually times too of when the next train is actually expected.

Piccadilly to Ealing … not