Ok, so it’s not the Olympics – but come on, isn’t it just a little bit exciting to have the pink signs back the network again?
The ubiquities signage that was everywhere for 2012, is now here again for the Rugby World Cup in various places – our favourite point that we’ve spied it at so far is here at Hammersmith, where just for once the flower seller hadn’t completely covered up the Labyrinth – Pink sign AND Labyrinth, double win!
Pink signs are back!
We’ve been slowly chipping away, adding 3D maps to the App … the last few that need mopping up are the original Overground stations, and we’ve finally got around to doing the complicated mass of stairs and lifts that is Crystal Palace! It’s one of our favourite, most beautiful stations – but it is a little complicated with multiple platforms.
The finished 3D map will be in the next update to Station Master.
Crystal Palace 3D Map
As far as we can tell – this article from City Metric – has stumbled upon what may be TfL’s own internal geographically accurate London Rail map.
It contains physical features too such as London’s parks and the M25, as well as the Thames, and it does, as you would expect, let you get a real feel for how densely packed the stations are in the inner area of London as opposed to out in the suburbs.
Update:
TfL have now put this map on their own website on this page here.
The London Transport Museum announced this week, that tickets to go and visit the abandoned station Down Street station are coming soon … except at the eye-watering rate of £75, not even including a booking fee!
If you want information on ALL the abandoned Tube stations in London then you’ll want to get a copy of our Disused Tube App, which lists and has details of them all.
Down Street
Details over on the LTM website here, of course you can just follow Station Master Geoff when he got to take a trip down there earlier this year …
Whenever we look at the planned engineering works for the weekend, it’s always annoying to see if the bit of the Tube map that you want to go to is the bit that’s closed – that’s why it’s always nice if there’s an explanation as to what work is being done – or better still, it’s always nice to be able to see the work being done!
Which is what we saw at West Brompton at the weekend just gone, where there were clearly works going on at track level.
Works at West Brompton
We hopped on a DLR train the other day, to find that it was one of the refurbished units which now has longitudinal seating. Here’s what it looks like …
DLR Seating
And the weird thing is, we don’t like it – but we can’t quite put our finger on why! There are eight seats in total now spread along, and it feels like too many to have in a row. It’s weird when you’ve been used to the old style for so long, and so overall – we don’t like it. Yet it’s going to happen to all the other units.
There’s a new London podcast in town! Introducing … Underground London Radio .. “London News, Arts, Culture, Transport, Tech, Music. The inside track on one man’s life in the capital.”
And Station Master Geoff got invited on to talk all things Tube trains, and answer your questions! We also naturally gave Station Master a plug as well.
You can listen direct via their Audioboom page here, or subscribe direct to the podcast via iTunes here. Give it a play!
With the addition of the new Overground stations in London, it was only a matter of time before the carriage maps got updated, and they look like this …
Overground Carriage Map
Which is quite frankly a bit of a mess, because now the whole orangey-network of Overground lines have been squeezed into a shape that is not suitable for them. But most importantly, the topological layout has been completely distorted, and there’s no way that you would use this as any sort of journey planner for the Overground.
Why not just put Tube maps (which should be called the TfL map anyway, because that’s what it really is) up in Overground trains, which would help people plan much better journeys. By having Overground lines up in carriages shown only on those trains, it might make you take a journey purely by Overground that would be much quicker if you used instead used a tube line!
It’s a right old mess … so much so that you should read Diamond Geezer where he calls it “TfL’s worst map”, which is hard to disagree with.
This is rather brilliant .. we’ve always wanted to compare the difference accurately between the two metro systems, and someone’s finally gone and done it!
London Underground versus the New York Subway
So good, they named it
As the D-Stock trains disappear from the District Line and get replaced with the S7 units, they’re not going to the railway rusting ground to die, or be cut up – no, they’re being refurbished and turned into the ‘D Trains’ on VivaRail instead.
D-Stock now Vivarail
The full story is on their blog here, although when you read that:
“This is a train that has been stripped back to the bones: the bogies have been overhauled; new engine modules, a fuel tank and electronic power controller have been fitted; all the wiring removed; and an entirely new cab fitted. Seats, floors and doors still need plenty of work – but perhaps we can be forgiven for concentrating on the other bits first! Certainly our guests seem to have appreciated what has been achieved and we are extremely grateful for their open minds and perceptive questions”
Then you almost start to question with that much work being done, why didn’t they just build a new train from scratch?
Anyway – District Line trains, now in the north of England.