London Transport Museum feature Thoughts of Angel Tube

Many of us know that some London Underground staff do try to make their stations more welcoming. It's good to hear that over the last few months London Transport Museum Friend Stephen Barry, a retired journalist, has been on a mission to track down attempts to make stations a more pleasant environment.

Stephen visited stations across London, speaking to staff, meeting passengers & taking photos of the great projects which are taking place. These stories and images are being shared on the Museum's blog starting with Angel Tube station’s Thought of the Day which I've featured regularly on this blog too.

Stephen writes "It all began in 2011 when Customer Station Assistant (CSA) Ken Walters, who works at Angel Station on the Northern Line, heard about a suburban station where passengers dropping off their partners in the morning were banned from kissing them goodbye.

“Apparently it was causing traffic holdups in the station car park,” said Ken. “I thought this was quite funny and wrote on our ticket hall whiteboard that ‘Kissing is allowed at this station’. As it seemed to make our customer smile, after talking to colleagues we decided to continue to put up regular light-hearted quotes. The aim is to get customers to stop and smile when they pass through the station, as they are often in a rush and feeling stressed.”

Helping Ken with his daily dose of ticket hall wisdom are fellow CSA’s Devika Webb and Rathees Kadadcham."

They've  also have put up a comment box in the ticket hall where people can leave their own quote suggestions, which usually go on display within a couple of days.

It was good to see the Museum picking up the exposure other bloggers including myself have given the site & the thoughts "The site has been picked up by blogger Annie Mole and is featured on her ‘Going Underground’ blog, which takes an irreverent look at aspects of the London Underground network. It also features on the Time Out and the islingtonpeople blogs.

“Annie, who lives locally, takes a picture of the ‘thought’ every day and downloads it onto her site, which has a link back to our site,” said Rathees."

Actually I don't live locally, but worked locally, but it's the thought that counts!

Seeing the thoughts on my blog also led to the station being featured on Japanese television.


“NHK, their national broadcaster, found out about our web site and sent a crew to interview us and also some customers,” said Rathees. “The item featured in a documentary they made about the world’s underground systems, where we are described as the ‘human face of the underground’.”

For more on the Thoughts of Angel team read Stephen's full post for London Transport Museum's blog.  H/T to Ianvisits for letting me know about this.  And congratulations to the Angel Tube guys and gals they certainly do brighten up the day for Islington's commuters.

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