Station Master App

Turnham Piccadilly Green

23rd January 2014

Piccadilly at Turnham Green

Last year, living on the Piccadilly Line as we do, we saw the publicity asking people for their views and thoughts on it. In particular, it seems, whether trains should stop more often, or even on a regular, basis at Turnham Green.

This Station Master made the point that they’d like to see more off-peak trains stop there during the day time – e.g. after 10am, and before 4pm, which I suspect wasn’t a popular choice.

Anyway, TfL have now published their results, which they sent to everyone in an email. They don’t specifically say “We’re not going to stop more trains at Turnham Green”, instead they just say:

“Although we recognise that stopping more Piccadilly line trains at Turnham Green would benefit customers using that station, we do not currently do so because it would mean decreasing the service to other parts of the Piccadilly line, longer journey times for customers passing through Turnham Green station and a potentially less reliable service for all passengers on the line”

That is, until then we spotted a small link at the bottom which DOES take you to the full report, which is here. (Note, it’s a 38-page PDF but the summary is the same : No additional Piccadilly Line trains to Turnham Green).

… but the summary is the same : No additional Piccadilly Line trains to Turnham Green).

~ ~ ~

Hang on … that is of course, until you find the one small paragraph on page 24, which then DOES go onto tell you that ‘TfL plans to stop Piccadilly Line trains at Turnham Green station all day once the line is modernised’ – i.e. once there is a new signalling system in place with new rolling stock.

This is what annoys us about such lengthy reports – in the initial email you get, the message is one of “Trains will not stop at Turnham Green”, but only if you read the full lengthy report, do you find that new trains will stop there – but not until 2018. And we suspect that date will slip to 2020 in reality.

Reading the rest of the report too it does reference the fact the initial survey was to ask about people’s thoughts on the whole of the Piccadilly Line, but they do seem to have focused on the Turnham Green issue and not much else. There’s no mention of the Piccadilly Line going to Ealing Broadway for example, or whether the District Line will go to Rayners Lane instead once the new S-Stock are rolled out on that line.

This post categorised under: Future services / Tube
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London Tube Stats

22nd January 2014

This caught our attention yesterday.

Ollie has made a superb data-visualisation website called London Tube Stats that shows you where people enter and exit the Tube, and where they go once on board.

You can choose an option from the drop-down menu at the top to change the view, or click on a specific station to show you the stats just for there.

This post categorised under: Map / Statistics
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Northern Line Invaders

21st January 2014

Seems like there’s been a spate of ‘Fake Signs’ doing the round on the tube again, with various people tweeting us links to fake signs that people have been sticking up in carriages on tubes.

The Poke has the best summary webpage that we can find with all the current variants, including the rather excellent ‘snake charmer’ variant.

But what we like best are the ones on the Central Line that go over the line diagram maps replacing either station names, or mixing up the red line in some other awkward fashion (There’s even a Facebook Group specifically for them!).

But then something stirred in our memories and we dug through the extensive Station Master archive of tube photos, and .. yes!

We knew they were there somewhere, and here they are – the first time (we think!) that rogue stickers first appeared on the tube, as these from the Northern Line date back to 2003. The space-invaders one is our favourite.

This post categorised under: Fun
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Follow … who?

20th January 2014

After Chris Hewitt tweeted about this last week here, “Only TFL would run a poster campaign announcing they’re on Twitter… and leave off their Twitter handle.”, we wondered if we could help out as it was something that we’d noticed too.

It’s fair to say that a poster advertising Twitter services, has got to give you their Twitter name – it’s a no brainer.

So we spent literally half an hour this morning putting this together which – look! Actually includes the Twitter name that would be useful to follow, along with a link that takes you to a page telling you about others, too.

We’ve left off the official roundel for obvious copyright reasons. Everything else is of our own design.

A Twitter poster that actually includes the Twitter name to follow

This post categorised under: Posters / Publicity
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Oyster Shaped London

19th January 2014

Last week, those nice people at Londonist ran a story with a map that we provided for them showing the real layers of where the Oyster fare zones are in London. They had a couple of discrepancies in them though, which we’ve now tided up, and the latest version is below. Click on the map for a larger full-screen version.

The grey and white shaded areas are fare Zones 1-9 starting with Z1 which is white in the centre, also shown is where the Cycle Hire scheme is (in blue), and the congestion charging zone (in red). The edge of the London Boroughs are then shown with the orange line.

Oyster Map

This post categorised under: Map / Oyster
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Barking Bay Platform

18th January 2014

Whilst on our travels on the H&C, we noticed something else had changed, that we think came into effect with the December 2013 timetable.

At Barking, there is a bay road/platform where H&C trains normally terminate and turn around in. Within the Station Master App this is what the exit information lists – Platform 3.

But now it seems that H&C trains are terminating on the same platform as District trains (Platforms 1a and 2) but whereas District trains open their doors on both sides, H&C trains only open the doors on the right, Platform 2 only.

The train then goes into sidings beyond the station, and comes back into service (as shown here) on Platform 6 instead.

A ‘S7’ stock train on the H&C line starts it journey at Platform 6, Barking.

We’re not sure if it’s a permanent thing, or just something that’s being tried out. It also seems to change depending on what time of day it is, so it is rather confusing if your starting station is Barking as to which platform to go to for the next train …

This post categorised under: Platforms / Tube
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New entrance at Hammersmith

17th January 2014

The Station Master is spending a lot of time on the Hammersmith & City Line this week, so it didn’t take us long to notice the familiar blue hoarding and a million construction safety notices to spot that some new works are taking place.

Seems like the barbers shop at Hammersmith Station (C&H) is no more – perhaps everyone is buying their haircuts off the internet instead? – and so LU are turning it into a new entrance/exit on Beadon road to be complete by July of this year. A new ticket office and gateline? That should help – it does get crowded when an entire train turns out and tries to get through the three barriers.

New-Hammersmith-Entrance 1

This does make us wonder though whether they’ll make one side the way-in only, and one said the way-out only, which’ll mean a slightly longer walk if you’re connecting from the the Hammersmith (D&P) station.

Oh. And did you spot the deliberate mistake back there? We said ‘ticket office’. There will of course be no ticket office, just a bank of ticket machines ..

This post categorised under: Infrastructure / Ticket Office
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An evening of Kultura

16th January 2014

A poet, an artist, an escalator-repairing music producer, the man who can taste the tube map – but most of all last night we loved musician Shaun Buswell who gave us a presentation on how he set himself the challenge of creating an orchestra made up of musicians he met as strangers whilst travelling on the London Underground.

We’re not sure how we hadn’t heard of this before, but it was brilliant as you’ll see from the video here.

Many thanks to Andy Green from Tubespiration for organsing London’s first Tube Kultura.

This post categorised under: Events / Tube / Video
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Covent Garden Closing

15th January 2014

It’s as if we’re mind readers. Just yesterday we were musing about the possibility of Covent Garden doing ‘a Camden Town’ and closing at particular times, and that’s exactly what’s happening … well, sort of.

TfL just put out a press release to announce some works to the station to upgrade its lifts, and give them 25% more capacity. We’re still not quite sure how they can replace the four lifts with lifts that are 25% bigger without using some sort of TARDIS/Timelord like technology, but I guess we’ll just have to take their word for it.

The main effect of this is that Covent Garden will be exit only for 10 months from Monday 24th February onwards. In addition, westbound trains will not stop at all at weekends – meaning you’ll have to get off at Leicester Square instead.

Whilst all this great, and extra lift capacity will ease the problem (the modern lifts will also travel faster, meaning quicker shunting of passengers up and down, too) we can’t but help wonder whether it’ll also obviously be used as an experiment to see if Leicester Square station can cope on Saturdays, and in the long term – even with the new lifts – we will yet see ‘a Camden Town’ happening at Covent Garden.

This post categorised under: Engineering / Lifts
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A short storey about steps

14th January 2014

An intriguing audio announcement at Covent Garden came over the PA system when we were there the other day. Far from being told to mind the gap, report anything suspicious, always touch out, or any of the other mantra that’s continually spouted at you, we were told that ‘Entering the lifts from the wrong side is contravening a by-law’, and from the sounds of it could get you in trouble.

Covent Garden is of course hugely busy, and I suspect there’s a plan being mooted within TfL towers to make it exit only – a bit like Camden Town already is at the weekends. And indeed, the fastest way out of the station is to walk up the ‘entrance’ staircase, against the flow of people, and nip into the empty lift, moments before the queues of people who have been waiting on the proper side enter it and give you filthy looks for jumping the queue.

The other alternative of course is to walk up the 193 steps, which (as another of their famed audio announcements informs you) is the equivalent to a fifteen storey building. And their advice isn’t to be taken lightly – we once saw a man halfway up sat down, looking very red, out of breath, and a member of station staff and paramedic coming the other way down the stairs to assist him.

So if 193 steps is a fifteen storey building, that’s … (digs out calculator) 12.8 steps per storey. Right?

So we were rather surprised the other day when visiting Hampstead station – the deepest on the whole of the network, with the highest number of steps on its emergency staircase, in this case there are 320 of them (There are exactly 320 of them – 298 on the spiral, 22 flat – so why the sign says ‘over 320’ is another thing that is wrong), which by TfL’s maths at 12.8 steps per storey must mean it’s the equivalent to a twenty-five storey building .. right? RIGHT!

Oh. No. Wait …

It seems that ’15 storeys’ is the generic sign. Either that or TfL have a magic calculator that always gives the number ’15’ no matter what you type into it?

Expect to see a sign at Chalk Farm shortly informing you of it’s 54 steps being the equivalent to a 15 storey building …

This post categorised under: Accessibility / Posters / Signage / TfL
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