The the new entrance at Tottenham Court Road has opened up (and Central Line trains are stopping again) at it looks magnificent.
TCR
Battersea Extension Underway
6th December 2015
The first official shovel hitting the earth happened last week out at Nine Elms to mark the official start to the Northern Line Extension, even though preparatory work had been going on for weeks.
We found ourselves walking through Kennington though the other day, exactly above where the Kennington loop is, and found a site there where work has also started, along with a nice noticeboard explaining to local residents what is going on.
Your new Northern Line Extension should open in 2019 …
NLE Kennington Park Site
Waterloo Shell Entrance Closed
4th December 2015
Here’s a change to the network that we didn’t know about until someone pointed it out to us – seems like it was one that TfL slipped under the radar and didn’t publicise much. The ‘Shell Centre’ entrance and exit at Waterloo has been closed, whilst building work takes place on the rest of the complex by the entrance, and the entrance has obviously been affected. It’s going to be closed for the next three years.
As far as we can tell, no work is being done to the Tube entrance itself, but it has been affected by the works.
Closed Entrance
Contractor Notice
New entrance at Tottenham Court Road
2nd December 2015
As previewed in this video here, one of the new entrances at Tottenham Court Road station (complete with fancy artwork and stunning glass canopy) is now open as of this morning.
We’ve already updated our 3D map to reflect this change. The rumours have it that Central line trains will also start stopping again officially as of Monday 7th December (but possible on the Sunday over the weekend too!)
Tottenham Court Road 3D
Which City?
1st December 2015
A fabulous online quiz in the Guardian today – can you identify a city of the world by looking at the ‘plain’ (no station names) version of the geographically accurate map of the metro system for that city! It’s tricky .. this Station Master only got 9 out 11 right!
Geographical London
A map of the Tram
30th November 2015
So we’re plugging away quietly on creating TramMaster, an App with details of all the stops in Croydon, and as part of it we’ve created our own map of the Tram system which has the route numbers which it seems that not everyone is aware of! So we’ve put them in showing that there are indeed four distinct lines on the tram system!
We hope to have TramMaster released soon in the new year, 2016.
This is the way to do blobs
25th November 2015
Accessibility blobs! Do you love ’em, or hate ’em? It’s essential to know of course these days which stations have step-free accessibility and which don’t, but some argue that the main Tube map has been disrupted by too much information pollution (not just with accessibility blobs, but with all information on the Tube map) and that there should be once ‘simple’ standard Tube map for the majority of users, and then specialised versions for others.
The main issues that people have always had with ‘wheelchair blobs’ (as they’ve become known) is that on a standard Tube map, there are ‘ticks’ and then circular ‘connector blobs’ to represent stations which are and aren’t interchange points.
When a station then gets a ‘wheelchair blob’ it becomes circular in shape, and then there’s no way of knowing if its meant to represent an interchange station or not – therefore rendering the regular connector blob pointless.
Which is why we were intrigued to see this at Covent Garden station the other day, on a map on the wall, where the wheelchair blobs have been stuck to the side of of the regular tick/connector blobs of stations. A really nice touch, the first time we’ve seen it, and something that we wish was more prevalent.
Covent Garden Blobs
This way to the platforms
22nd November 2015
London Bridge is undergoing all sorts of construction work at the moment, leading to it very easy to get confused about which way to go to get to your platform and get the train. But it doesn’t help when platforms 1-3 are through this impossibly small gap – must be a squeeze to fit everyone through there at the height of the rush-hour.
This way!
Original Overground Complete
20th November 2015
When we set out to draw 3D maps of all Tube stations we soon realised that we’d have to do all the Overground and DLR too – and that meant a lot more work! So long in fact, that during that time MORE stations got added to the Overground, all the services out of Liverpool Street, but we haven’t added those onto Station Master (yet?) so there’s currently no plans to draw 3D maps for them.
But we have (finally!) finished ALL THE OTHER Overground stations when we took a trip to Watford this week, so that we could sketch out Watford Junction and turn it into a 3D map, it’ll be in the next update of the App – of course.
Are they building the Croxley Link yet?
19th November 2015
Yes.. yes they are! We found ourselves up in Watford recently (as Watford Junction is the last original Overground station that we had not drawn a 3D map for yet, so we went to get it done!) and whilst we were in the area, it seemed rude not to have a look and see what work was going on with the Croxley Link.
This is the view from the bridge looking east down to the old Watford Stadium Halt – there has been loads of work going on here to clear the vegetation where nature had overgrown everything, and we love the old red coloured Network South East lamps that are still here.
The new Watford Vicarage Road station will not open in the same spot – that will be to the west side of the bridge instead. When we looked there was a team of people in bright orange Hi-Vis taking photos and making notes of what they could see. So it would seem that work is being done … don’t expect it to be finished until 2020 though.