A little knowledge is not a dangerous thing.....

Coming home tonight I got to Glamoursmith (aka Hammersmith) to change onto the beloved District Line. It was about 7.10 and there were an unusally large amount of people there for that time of night. Nothing showing on the indicator and no announcements from the station assistants. So I thought "Right" and stormed over to the help point machine, pressed the blue button for information and waited. After about 30 seconds a guy came on asking if he could help me. I explained there were a lot of people on the platform, no signs of trains and could he let us know when the next one was. After explaining that I was going to Richmond, the line appeared to go dead for a minute, but the guy came back and said it will be about 8-10 minutes.

Great, why not tell us then?

So I politely asked him to make an announcement across the platform as no one knew what was going on and could he also let the people waiting for an Ealing Broadway train know what was going on.

The line went dead and I scowled and some women sitting nearby were giving me encouraging looks and quietly saying "You Go Girl" to themselves.



30 seconds later and there were two announcements over the platform telling every one that the trains were leaving Earls Court or South Ken or somewhere further up the line.

Victory. Then every few minutes there were more announcements telling people about the progress. That was my good deed for the day, but you know tube guys a little knowledge isn't a dangerous thing, it might mean you get a bus instead, or it might mean you go off to get some chocolate, but it simply lets you know what the hell is going on.


Cooling Down the Tube - Official Rules at last

I'd always thought it was a bit suspicious that there was nothing about Mayor Ken Livingstone's offer of a reward of �100,000 to find an air conditioning system for the tube, on the official London Underground website. I'd reported on this when I first heard about this in July! And now in September in usual timely fashion, the tube have decided to resurrect interest in the idea by splashing it across the front page of their site (and it's loads less topical as the heatwave's over - good timing Tube PR guys).

So if you fancy your chances of getting your hands on 100 grand from Sheriff Ken - get your thinking caps on quickly as you only have until the 12th September to apply. For the official rules (strangely under "promotions & offers") see here.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Monday, September 08, 2003 Permalink COMMENT HERE
Tweet http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2003/09/little-knowledge-is-not-dangerous.html