Thursday, June 30, 2005
Star Tube
 Hmmm. I'm not quite sure what to make of this, or how to describe it!
But just when you think you've seen every tube parody/variation, another pops along within a couple of minutes (unlike the trains themselves) to amuse you...
Perhaps you'd just better go and have a look at it, and try and make sense of it yourself!
Dr Who Tube - Update from Annie
Not exactly wild about the Star Trek tour. Looks like it was put together quickly unlike the hours that must have been spent on another sci-fi classic with a tube take. It's the Dr Who Gallifrey Underground Railway Map. It was used for a Dr Who convention in 2001. The convention's special guest was Bonnie Langford who once played The Dr's asssitant (now you can see why Billie Piper got the current role - the similarities are ....er......well, they're both women and they both used to er... "sing"). Sadly the quality of the enlargement isn't great - but some people clearly have a lot of time on their hands.
The convention write up said: "One of the most popular things at Gallifrey 2001 was the Map, aka the Map of the Gallifrey Underground Railway. Based upon the Underground map of London, the Gallifrey Underground map featured eleven different 'lines' going places real and imaginary, from Gallifrey history to Doctor Who, from science fiction media to the eclectic and bizarre (Convent San Tanco, anyone?)"
The map below is a bit more readable when enlarged, unfortunately I don't know enough about Dr Who to comment much more on it. But I think the Whoies are way ahead of the Trekkies when it comes to tube parodies.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
No Smoking - Reward �10
Monday the 23rd of May - maybe she should have sent it in instead and won a tenner.
Interesting idea
Marcin Wichary sent me a link to this picture, which first of all I thought might make an interesting tattoo.
But it's Rodcorp's "impression" of the tube map in terms of the most used lines and amounts of passenger traffic. As he says it's not based on any official sources but is "just a little sketch on the way to being something more accurate - a seed of an idea thinking about what it might like to become".
As it's the same Rodcorp who brought us the brill tube map with walk lines, it'll be interesting to see if he does work it up.
And speaking of tattoos - how chavvy is this? (originally sent to me by Ralf - The Cartoonist).
It can't possibly be real, can it?
Monday, June 27, 2005
Brunel's Wapping Shaft
Thames Tunnel Tour on Sunday how entertaining it was going to be. If you read this blog regularly you'll have seen that Ian Dolby alerted us to a tour of the oldest underground tunnels on the London Underground between Roterhithe and Wapping. The tunnels were "floodlit" for two weekends so that we could see Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel's tunneling work in all their glory.
I have a small brain and can't recall all of the historical facts we learnt, so you'll have probably have to go to Neil's blog if you want "the science bits". (Neil, Pixeldiva (Ann) and Helene, came along with me).
But I thought I'd give you a flavour of what went on and a few pictures of the day.
It was a pretty sunny day, so I was amazed at how many people turned up for our group. About seventy of us started in the ticket hall and we then had to go outside to collect our yellow stickers. The previous group was equally large and the following group was bigger than ours. It wasn't just the usual geeks (us), anoraks and trainspotters that you would expect. I spotted an old work colleague which was quite bizarre.
Our guide "Robert" appeared repslendant in a Brunel T Shirt and told us what we were letting ourselves in for. Not only were we about to see the "eighth wonder of the world", but the Tunnel of Lurve, the world's first underwater shopping arcade, the world's first tunnel under a river (making it an International Landmark Site), the world's first underwater party venue, the world's first underwater fairground.
So we all trundled back down the escalator and onto the platform at Rotherithe, being warned not to do any flash photography "Even though our staff and underground drivers are all very good looking"
Robert gave us some more historical tidbits including an explanation as to why he called it the Tunnel of Love and it was nothing to do with the many references to shafting that followed. Basically, Marc Brunel (Isambard's dad) was born in France, but spent as lot of his life in the States. However, he came to England looking for the English girl (Sophie Kingdom) with whom he had fallen in love in France. He found her in London and they eventually settled in Rotherhithe where Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born and the rest is history.
We were told to get onto the next train and try to all squeeze into the first carriage. When the train pulled into the station a woman behind me said "This isn't the train is it?", as clearly after this grand preamble she'd been expecting some Victorian carriage rather than the smelly East London Line stock, with a few shocked Sunday afternoon passengers thinking "WTF's going on?".
At Wapping we were able to see the twin tunnels which were the original Brunel designed ones. They weren't initially built for passenger trains but for cargo, however this didn't work very well as they couldn't get the horses down the narrow winding staircase. So there were loads of shops and arcades and fairgrounds as well with more pedestrians than cargo.
 We then walked along the platform at Wapping and got into the lift which would take us to the top of this narrow winding staircase. At the top were were greeted by some startled old ladies who went into a bit of a frenzy worrying about whether they'd make it back into the lift by the time we'd all got out. So there was much tooing and froing and shouts of "Come on Gladys" as Gladys "legged" or rather "speed shuffled" it into the lift.
Now thirty five minutes into the tour, and Robert was clearly into his stride. "We are now at the top of French Brunel's Wapping Shaft". Not a titter. "As you can see this is a shaft of enormous dimensions". We started to feel a little uncomfortble. "When erecting the shaft a cap was used to halt the flow...." That was too much and Helene could not control herself and through her hand let out a huge snorting guffaw, only amplified by the vastness of the shaft. This meant that me and Ann were in silent hysterics too. Sorry we're so juvenile as everyone else seemed to control themselves perfectly.
 The rest of the tour was fairly innuendo free, as Robert seemed to have his fill of shafting by the time we headed back to Rotherhithe. We had a quick trip to the Museum just round the corner of the station, where we could buy Thames Tunnel memorabilia such as "double shafted pencil sharpeners", glittery rubbers, the natty Brunel T shirt and the story of the Thames Tunnel - "The Triumphant Bore" - every pun intended.
We headed back to Wapping and The Captain Kidd pub for a post mortem, and were then quizzed to death by Geoff who turned up later. The rest of the evening flowed by with the aid of lots of nuts, crisps and alcohol and discussions which would be more suited on Belle du Jour's blog. A very surprising day - read on for Ann and Helene's and now Neil's take on the event!
How disrupted, exactly?
excellent blog entry here, where the authour has taken multiple 'snapshots' of TFL's distruption map, and analysed them to see how often the whole network really is trouble free. There's a couple of other fun things that they've done with it too, but I won't repeat or spoil it here, just go and have a look at it for yourself.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Phew wot a scorcher
British Rail train last night (breaking windows to let in air) - this morning a westbound Central line train broke down between Bank and St Paul's station, leaving people in the carriages for over an hour. Amazingly The Standard weren't rubbing their hands in glee and we have a fairly subdued and restrained headline of "Commuters trapped on Tube".
Sadly I haven't seen any companies handing out fans or free water at stations this year as I think the heatwave as taken most people by surprise. But the tube map makes a handy fan and as air conditioning isn't on the cards, perhaps that and the usual advice of carrying bottles of water, is all the help we'll get.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Fax cannot be carried on the Docklands Light Railway
folding cycles are OK on the DLR but in the same cryptic sentence "Dogs may travel for free on Docklands Light Railway but they must remain on the floor." That's allright then, I'm pleased that flying or hovering dogs aren't allowed on the DLR.
Seriously though, if you pay for dogs, does that mean that they can have a seat?
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Two in a row ...
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Nice shirt - Where's your ID?
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Webby Awards - Online Oscars
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, it is our pleasure to officially notify you that London Underground Tube Blog is a Webby Worthy Award winner as part of the 9th Annual Webby Awards.
This is a tremendous honor, as less than 20% of the sites entered in the Webby Awards were deemed worthy of this distinction. With over 4,300 sites entered from all 50 states and over 40 countries, your work truly represents the best of the web. You should be extremely proud of your accomplishment..."
And it continued with details of a plaque I could order and how to maximise the PR impact of the achievement.
So thanks to co-contributers, Neil n Geoff obviously (no mean feat contributing when you're running daily blogs of your own, so thanks guys). I'd also like to thank the many of you who all actively comment each day, and to all of you who read the blog and don't comment, (commenting isn't everyone's thing and I still love looking at the stats) and thanks to all of you who link to the blog or add it to your blog roll.
I'd also like to thank Bill Gates for providing free webspace to host the pictures through MSN Groups, Blogspot for ignoring my many emails to try to fix the slow loading in IE, Firefox for providing a browser that makes the blog load in lightening speed, Haloscan for providing the commenting software and of course The London Underground for being so, err, well, er.... entertaining.
Thanks guys, we couldn't have done it without you. And I can add it to the growing list of almost wons (Bloggies 2004, Bloggies 2005, Guardian British Blog Awards 2003) this blog has almost won.
Friday, June 17, 2005
My version of THE London Underground Song
Same song - new lyrics - London Underground may strike over toilets
Some people might like to go to the loo,
Or have a nice place for a little brew.
Some drivers refuse to clock in at Earl's Court
With crap facilities if they get caught short
Cos hey, get on your bike 
Cos once again, a chance to strike
"Victorian" is what they say
The standard of the bogs today
It gives them all a chance to say
"London Underground
London Underground
The RMT are there for me
London Underground
London Underground
We need to go, oh where's Bob Crow?
London Underground
London Underground
We'll take our clocking in cards and shove em up Ken's arsehole."
Adam Kay, Suman Biswas, Paul Weller - eat your heart out!
Yet another variation
Saint Etienne have a tube map variation as a navigable aid on the home page of their website.
Surely there can't be many more of these that we haven't discovered... can there be?
Update from Annie - While we're on the subject of bands and tube imagery/maps etc a singer/songwriter from California called Elan emailed me to say that her second album - London Express has a website heavily influnced by the tube and is a virtual tour of London - Have a look at the flash version - it's quite cool.
Happy Birthday Ken Livingstone
Ken was born.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Tube's Tim O'Toole Tells us to Shower
take a shower before they get on the tube as an attempt to be more considerate during these "sweltering" summer months.
He told LBC's radio station earlier today: �I want to assure people that I only travel by the Tube and I always take a shower, but other than that I would certainly hope that during these summer months when it is very, very, warm and we are pressed very close together that to the extent people can practise personal hygiene it would help us.�
As part of LBC's Considerate Commuter campaign he also believed that Northern Line commuters would be likely to be the most inconsiderate as they clearly have the most to put up with. Loving this cracking soundbite: �Well, I don�t like to brand any of my commuters as inconsiderate but I think it would be fair to say those who are given the greatest challenge by the asset failures pose the greatest challenge to considerate behaviour and right now that would be the Northern line.�
Perhaps the London Underground would be better off giving showers to people when they leave the tube, rather than before they get on. Or better still why not give away anti perspirant or deodorant? Or why not provide some decent air conditioning instead?
BTW on the Considerate Commuter site you can nominate your commuting heroes and villains, no prizes for guessing that currently the commuting villains list is loads longer than the commuting heroes. Villains include the usual suspects of people happily picking their noses oblivious to the rest of the carriage, people putting feet on seats, people putting bags on seats, tube nutters, tube preachers, tube vomiters etc, etc.
Thames Tunnel Tour
guided tour round the oldest section of the Tube this weekend 18th/19th June and the following weekend 25th/26th June.
He says: "Not sure it's worth the fiver they're charging as you could just get on the train and look out of the window. I suppose it does include admission to the museum and a mini-guided tour of the stations."
The tours run every hour from 1pm up to 4pm from Rotherhithe tube. Great for all history buffs and you'll be able to descend into "the beautiful road to Hades" as a Victorian actress said. Full details on the tour here.
Monday, June 13, 2005
What do you read on the tube?
100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed if anyone's interested.
I must admit I always get kind of uneccessarily embarrassed if I'm at a raunchy point at any part of a book I might be reading, as I'm always highly aware of people reading over my shoulder (a big no, no as far as Tube etiquette is concerned), but something that I'm sure that everyone's done at some point.
Just after I jumped off the Waterloo and City and onto the DLR the guy opposite me was reading a book called The Art of Deception. So I felt like I was surrounded by wannabe hackers or wannabe well.... er you don't expect to people to be reading erotica on the Waterloo & City Line.
Anyone else reading anything on the tube that I might want to over shoulder read? And what is it about other people's reading material that's sometimes more compelling than your own? I curse the amount of times I craning to read some gossip in Heat or Now or OK or Whatever - or even some ridiculous headline in The Sun or The Mirror, when I've got perfectly good reading material of my own.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Shady activities
 I always wanted a true map of which bits of the Underground really were under the ground, and which parts were out in the open, but could never find one - so I've ended up making one of my own here.
It's part of my collection of alternative tube maps.
Before you all heckle me to death, I know that parts of the Circle line do 'break out' into the open, and some of the stations that I've marked in the shaded ares you can see daylight, but it would have got to fiddly to put all that information in.
Constructive comments welcome ...
Friday, June 10, 2005
Anyone speak Croatian?
T-Mobile's Croatian portal have chosen this blog in their "blig, blog" section. I think I'm flattered, if I knew what they were saying. Anyway, welcome, if you're from Croatia.
This station holds your interest
London Underground quiz that I'd put on my site was fiendishly difficult, and get emails from people asking me to put them out of their misery and end their sleepless nights. Someone sent an email today asking for the answer to a clue from a different quiz - "This station holds your interest" - apparently two words, five letters each word. I spent about 10 minutes looking at the Tube map before thinking "this is a wind up, it's holding my interest as I'll never guess what it is".
But doing a trawl on t'internet and I found the quiz with this clue in it in a number of places (no answers obviously). So can anyone help?
If you want to see one of the pages where it's from - this one has the best layout. Happy Friday.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Name that tune
mobiles on the tube is lost on me considering half of my regular line is above ground everyone uses their mobiles until they hit Gloucester Road), someone's mobile was going off with a really familiar tone. But it was driving me mad as I couldn't think of what it was. I kept humming it all the way into work, thinking what a brill tone it was - cheerful and uplifting. I'd narrowed it down to a TV programme, but it was only when I got to the office that it hit me.
Listen here and you'll probably know it in an instant.
But speaking of annoying ringtones - Thanks to bloggerheads and anticrazyfrog I now know who that bloody crazy frog reminds me of:
Above the Underground
Barbican to Moorgate, Moorgate to Tower Hill, Tower Hill to Blackfriars and my favourites so far, Blackfriars to Temple.
Looking forward to seeing the rest of them. When it's finished it'll be like an online version of that above the Underground poster of the Piccadilly Line that gazillions of people have been looking to get hold of (they're at the London Transport Museum shop, apparently). Wonder why the powers that be on the tube only ever commissioned one of them?
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Smile, you're on ... the tube
Monday, June 06, 2005
Alexei Sayle on The Tube
 No, this is not a posting of a celeb-spot, but something I've been meaning to mention for the past couple of weeks since I've known about it.
Someone got in touch with me to tell me about the existence of a book called "Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian". Straight up!
It's a rather cheerful colourful childrens book, that 'stars' the comedian Alexei Sayle, and a tube train that is my namesake. Cool or what!
Now I say 'childrens book', because it's big, colourful and has cartoon based drawings and looks like it's going to be for young uns, until you open it up and read things like "Is that Alexei Sayle on that tube train? I think he's a right Wanker!" - you get the idea.
It also introduces us to yet another tube map variation, as Geoffrey the Tube Train runs along what's known as 'The Southern Line' in the book, with station names such as "Porkers Park", "New Stokington" and "Cripps Stafford". No, really!
I hunted for it on Amazon, and you can still buy it although they have no images, but the chap that told me about this was kind enough to scan in some of the stuff. (PS from Annie - it's in abe-books as well, plus see my comments)
I've opted to exclude the picture of a guy who gets his head stuck in Geoffrey's doors, who then deliberately speeds off, decapitating the chap in the process with a nice bloody 'splat' at the end of the platform. Nice! It's a little like 'Creep' (which is now out on DVD this week kids)
A Quick, Shameless Plug
www.tubechallenge.com/blog to www.purpletube.com.
Please update your links etc accordingly.
Right, carry on with the transport geekery!
(One day Annie, you WILL move this blog from Blogger ... just think of the speed increase in IE) :-)
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Those new District Line trains ...
Friday, June 03, 2005
Fare Dodger Pays Up after Emigrating to New Zealand
Penalty Fares were doubling. I'm sure LU's PR department thought it would be a good idea to publish this story two days afterwards to try to soften the blow and make any dodger think of the error of their ways rather than moan about the increase in the fine.
The person anonymously forwarded used notes to London Underground and said, as a born again Christian, his years of persistant fare dodging in the London were wrong.
A. Christian (who hardly sounds like a hardened fare dodger to me) wrote: "Occasionally the train would be about to leave the station and there was no time to buy a ticket from the ticket machine, so I usually paid at the other end when asked for my ticket by ticket collectors.
"In some of these cases there was no-one collecting tickets at the other end so sometimes I would buy a ticket from the machine at the other end of my journey, then rip it up and put it in the bin. Other times I did not pay for the ride at all. (WHAT A CRMINAL - HE OUGHT TO BE SHOT)
"My life is radically different to what it was then. I can't stand the thought of stealing and therefore I enclose this money to cover my fare.."
So different he felt that he ought to cough up four hundred quid to make amends. How exactly he came to the figure of �400 I'm not sure. You'll be pleased to know that London Underground decided to give the money to Great Ormond Street Hospital, rather than put it towards "much-needed income which can be used to fund improvements to our trains and stations."
Read the full story here.
New Uniforms in town too!
new uniforms people?
Yes.. the bright blue hats and coats of LU stuff, have now been replaced with, er.. dark blue hats and coats. Can any staff that read this tell us why it's been changed! And if they prefer it, or not? (PS from Annie - check out The Station Master's Blog for piccies like the one below of the old and new uniforms side by side)
Also.. a classic moment at Parson Green this morning, when two giggling teenage girls got on. They were lost in their own world dithering about and had to jump onto the train at the last moment just as the doors were closing.
Against the odds, the 'flip flop' style shoe that one of them was wearing got caught on the bottom of the train as she got in, and it feel down between the train and the platform onto the track below!
Bizarrely, she decided NOT to go back and get it and wrote it off - even though I explained to them that it probably could be retrieved for them, but no. Instead they got off at High St. Ken where I think she decided that she just nip down to the shops there (in her one remaining shoe and sock) and buy a new pair instead.
So if you see a pink shoe on the tracks at Parsons Green today, that's why...
Thursday, June 02, 2005
New District in Town
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Open Weekend at London Transport Museum Depot
Zone 1 Challenge
If you're looking for something to do this weekend or are tired of basking in the wonderful weather we're having at the moment (has anyone told the powers that be that it's the 1st June today - I'm supposed to be casting clouts, not putting on more clothes), why not visit London Transport Museum's Acton Town Depot Open Weekend, on the 4th and 5th June?
David says: "Open 3 times a year (plus occasional tours), the depot houses the stuff they cant get into the gaff at Covent Garden. Including many LT artefacts, maps, signs, buses and old tube trains (yes, old tube trains!)
Doors open at 11am. It�s a few minutes very simple walk from Acton Town tube station.
There are many volunteer staff showing punters around (including me).
For more info visit www.ltmuseum.co.uk and follow the links for the open weekend
Thanks. David Scard. (6th, Zone 1 Race 05)."
NEWER POSTS
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OLDER POSTS
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Little did we realise when a group of us went along to the 
And the irony of it all? When I got to White City, I realised that I hadn't touched in at Wimbledon when I changed from train to tube that morning, something which they would have discovered if they'd of been able to check my card.
I couldn't make this up. Managing Director of the London Underground has just told commuters to 
Ok, so everybody knew about Alexei and Anthea except for me.
I have no idea why on this day, this time, I felt compelled not to rush straight past, but I did .. and then ended up takeing a photo as I was rather amused by his sign as it 
