Please Stand On The Right
I’ve not seen this before on the Underground.
Please Stand On The Right
But it probably is a good simple idea.
Unless it was someone who forgot to clean their boots!
Action In West Hampstead
My post about the Dudding Hill Line got me thinking, so on my way to explore the area, I passed through West Hampstead, where I changed from the Overground to the Jubilee line. If you know the Jubilee line from the spectacular stations on the extension towards Stratford, then you’ll hardly recognise the stations on the line past Baker Street, as being on a modern Underground line. They probably have only had a couple of coats of paint, since my childhood.
The interchange I used consists of a walk down the busy West End Lane from one tired station to another.
Changing Trains At West Hampstead
Not very twenty-first century! Or even good nineteenth!
But look at the other side of the road. Signs talks about a new square for London. The development’s website is here. It might turn out well, with a nice square and cafe on the walk between the two stations. A decent cafe like a Carluccio’s would be ideal and help to improve the terrible interchange.
So it looks like Camden Council is starting to sort out one of the worst interchanges in London. Some old ideas for development are here.
I actually think that West Hampstead station has the same problem as Highbury and Islington station further up the North London line. They are both cramped Victorian stations on busy roads, that have been patched into a modern network, for the minimum amount of money. But then this is typical of many Overground stations!
Art On The U-Bahn
The U-Bahn is Berlin’s underground railway and just like some of the older lines on the London Underground, it has some appropriate artwork.
The one thing that I didn’t like was the stick on decoration of some of the trains, which meant you had difficulty seeing out to read the station names.
How Will Crossrail And The Central Line Link At Stratford?
I took this picture as I passed through Stratford station this morning.
Interchange To The Central Line At Stratford
I had intended to take pictures of the work at Pudding Mill Lane station, but the train windows were so dirty, I didn’t see anything worthwhile.
But it got me thinking as to how Crossrail and the Central Line will link at Stratford.
Will for instance, the two lines share an island platform for each direction, as they do now?
I think, that on the record of London’s interchanges of the past few years, the planners will come up with a good plan that works well.
A Gluten-Free High Street In Watford
I went to see Ipswich play at Watford yesterday and ate lunch in Carluccio’s in the High Street there. Their restaurant is actually in a sandwich between Nando’s and Jimmy’s World Grill, both of which seem to cater for gluten and other allergies.
A Carluccio’s Sandwich
There is also a Pizza Express on the other side of the road.
For the first time, I used the Overground to get to Watford, by travelling to Watford High Street station. This station is due to be rebuilt in the next few years as part of the Croxley Link project. As the Watford Junction station and the tracks through it are also being remodelled, it looks like Watford is getting a full transport makeover.
Après Bob, Le Déluge
It would seem that the successors to Bob Crow at RMT are out to inflict more pain on Londoners, than Bob Crow ever did, with five days of strikes in the next few weeks, as reported here on the BBC.
But Londoners will in the main survive and get on with their business, just as they did when Adolf gave the city, quite a few years of much more dangerous strikes.
As someone, who uses the Underground and Overground a lot, I pass by ticket offices quite a bit. Many are crowded with long queues at the ticket machines. Only a few stations seem to have long queues at the actual ticket offices themselves.
So to cure the problems of the queues at the ticket machines, Transport for London will introduce more and better machines at stations.
The ability to be able to use a contactless bank card as a ticket as well as Oyster, which is already happening and is supposedly working well on buses, will also contribute to a reduction of those needing the ticket offices.
If the machines and contactless cards do cut all the queues, then we could have have the situation of fully-manned ticket offices, where staff see hardly any customers at all.
Surely, the RMT should be stopping the installation of more ticket machines and the using of contactless bank cards as tickets, if they wanted to stop the closure of ticket offices.
Where else will this worrying new militancy turn up?
Mind The Gap – Threeses Style
I got off a Central line train at Bank station tonight and it was all a bit difficult for a family with a set of threeses, who were probably about three years old.
The platform there is rather curved and there must have been at least a twenty-five centimetre gap between the train and the platform.
But ushered by their parents, they jumped it successfully!
It really is a gap that needs sorting. This page has more details.
Marylebone To N1
I went to Birmingham to do a few things including collecting all my brass-coloured IKEA knobs.
I used Chiltern Trains both ways as with all these winds about, they were unlikely to suffer electrical problems on a non-electrified railway.
I also bought my replacement phone in the Bull Ring by the station and sorted it out on the train home, using the free power and wi-fi. Not that I was able to connect with my replacement sim, as O2 had made a mistake entering it into their system.
To get home to N1 from Marylebone isn’t theeasiest journey, especially as it was the rush hour.
So I asked one of the experts on the gate and virtually gave the reply, that if you want to get there, you don’t start from here. He regularly went to Hackney Wick to see his sister, so he did have good personal knowledge.
In the end, I hopped one stop on the Bakerloo line and then took the Metropolitan to Whitechapel station before taking the Overground to Dalston Junction for a bus down the Balls Pond Road.
There must be a better way.
The Tfl Journey Planner recommends going to Highbury and Islington via Oxford Circus and then getting the Overground back to Dalston Junction. That was my other route, but it does show how badly Hackney is connected to the Underground and the useless routes of the Bakerloo and the Bank branch of the Northern line.
Thinking about it, perhaps a better way would be to get the Bakerloo line to Regents Park station and then get a 30 bus to close to my house. But you wouldn’t use that route in the rush hour!
Even the proposed Crossrail 2 wouldn’t help as it doesn’t link to the Bakerloo line!
Crossrail might though, as it would be one stop to Paddington on the Bakerloo and then on to Moorgate for a 141 bus.
Bob Crow Looks After The East End
The Tube Strike today, is a pain to many Londoners. But I’ve just been to Canary Wharf and back and things didn’t seem that crowded.
I even changed at Shadwell, which is Bob Crow‘s birthplace, from the Overground to the DLR, with no hassle whatsoever. So perhaps he’s making sure the strike doesn’t affect his part of London very much!
But then, Hackney doesn’t have any Underground lines. And probably never will, as the powers that be, think if you give the plebs in Hackney one, they’ll only want another!
Tube Strikes And Cashless Buses
London for the next two days will suffer a Tube strike, about the closing of ticket offices and putting more staff in station lobbies and on platforms. New technology means that very few people need the ticket offices and the space could be better used for other purposes like retail.
Yesterday, London buses announced that they would no longer accept cash on buses from the summer. I would have thought that the Unions would have objected to this, as surely there must be job losses in those handling the cash. Or are the unions concerned with buses, in favour of a better service for all Londoners, whereas those on the Tube, are just out to do a King Canute and turn back the tide of new technology.
I suspect, every rail company in the UK, can’t wait for the day when Bob Crow retires!
The Anonymous Widower 