An Art Gallery With Its Own Station
I went to the Whitechapel Art Gallery today to see some of the Government’s art collection. It is a charming modern gallery tucked away in the East End of London, hard by one of the entrances to Aldgate East station.
Note the roundel in the station paying an artistic tribute to the gallery.
The exhibition was worth seeing, but the gallery had lots of other things to see and an excellent cafe.
A Lock Is a Gate
This is a mini concept album and drawing project for the Central Line. These pictures were taken at Bethnal Green station.
There is more on the project here. Note the poster for the Stairway To Heaven, which will commemorate the 173 people who died in the Bethnal Green tube disaster in 1943.
Is Bob Crow Going to the Olympics?
I suspect that if he does go, he won’t be too popular after holding the organisers to ransom over extra payments to his members.
Unless of course Ken wins the London Mayor election and he’ll be a guest of honour, along with a lot of other strange people.
On The Only Way To Essex
Gants Hill station on the Central line on the London Underground is not only the furthest east of any totally below level station, but it is built to a unique design.
Note the seats and the barrel roofs. The station was designed by Charles Holden before the Second World War although it didn’t open until some years after the war finished. Holden did some work for the Moscow Metro and this station is reminiscent of some of those there.
Note that I’ve contrived the title of this post as the old way to Essex by car, went past the station.
The Greenford Escalator
Here’s a video of the Last of the Many.
It could have been longer, but people kept using it.
The Last of the Many
I went to Greenford station today to see the last of something that was very common on the Underground; a wooden escalator.
As you can see from the pictures, the escalator isn’t pristine, but being as it’s owned by London Underground, I suspect it’s mechanically perfect. And of course as they scrapped hundreds, they’ve probably got several shedfulls of spare parts.
I did also make a video, which shows it still works.
I wonder how many others are still running in the UK. When I went to Moscow in 2000, they were still going on the Moscow Metro. But the Greenford one is just a baby to the giants in Moscow.
Wooden escalators may have advantages for those who are not too good on their pins. When I ascended, I just slid off as I used to do as a child. And of course now that guide dogs are allowed on escalators, they’re probably more dog-friendly.
But these are not reasons to go back to wooden treads. I do think though, that In the next few years a better step design will evolve.
I think it is needed as we now have people with large cases, buggies and all types of dogs wanting to use them more and more. And then of course there’s fashion items like stiletto heels and long skirts, which sometimes get caught. I am also not forgetting those on crutches or in a wheel-chair, who find escalators difficult.
It’s a challenge and he or she who solves it will make a lot of money.
An Excursion At Wood Green
I went to Turnpike Lane, as I was going to Cockfosters to be picked up by a friend from school. It is an ideal station to be picked up on the northern part of the M25.
I was ahead of time, so I got off at Wood Green, where my father had his printing works and had a walk round. The station itself is virtually unchanged from 1967 or so, which was the last time I used it. Although, the escalators have been modernised and passenger barriers have been installed. But this view is almost identical.
Wood Green Station
Except for a few details and the Ocado van.
I walked down Station Road took this picture of the works.
H Miller & Sons, Wood Green
Note that until perhaps twenty years or so ago, there was a sign saying, H Miller and Sons, above the widest of the arches, which then had a pair of double doors. My father was one of the sons.
My father’s office in the building was at the top left, where new brickwork can be seen. I spent many an hour on a desk there as a young child sitting on a pile of leather bound ledgers watching the trains go to and from the now closed Palace Gates station.
In the photograph, you can also see the parapet, where my grandmother’s ginger cat went about its business in this tale.
Here is a photo of the Jolly Anglers, which hasn’t changed that much since my father used to illegally take me in for lunch in the 1950s.
The Jolly Anglers, Station Road, Wood Green
I also took a photo of where the Rex Cinema used to be.
Where the Rex Cinema in Wood Green Was
Many a day, I would go there, whilst my parents worked. It wasn’t that bad a cinema and was magnitudes better than the Essoldo in East Barnet, which had a collander for a roof.
Krushchev Would Feel At Home
Turnpike Lane station is one of the few stations on the northern part of the Piccadilly line with some of the original 1930s details still intact.
Here’s some rather superb uplighters, that would not look out of place in a hotel of the period like the Savoy.
Uplighters at Turnpike Lane Station
And here’s the escalators.
Escalators at Turnpike Lane Station
The escalators are virtually identical to those on the Moscow Metro, as London Underground had a lot to do with installing them. When I was in Moscow in 2000, the escalators there still had their wooden treads. Because of the Kings Cross Fire, most, if not all, of those in London have now been replaced.
As Nikita Kruschev was one of those incharge of building the Moscow system, he would be pleased that London Underground still has some of the details from the 1930s similarly to those installed in Moscow.
North Shall Be East
When I used to use the northern part of the Piccadilly line, you always talked about going north and south. So from Turnpike Lane, or Turnpicky Larny in the local speak, to get to Cockfosters, you took a northbound train. But not any more, as this picture taken at the station shows.
North Shall be East
London Underground, now uses a convention, that the line has the same cardinal directions at every station.
Jon Snow Is Everywhere
It’s a good cause and I agree with the charity’s aims.
Trees for Cities Advert with Jon Snow
Adverts for Trees for Cities are everywhere on the Underground and they feature Jon Snow.
I was at Liverpool University, just before Jon Snow organised the protest against Lord Salisbury, who at the time was Chancellor of the university. There must have been an earlier protest, as I remember something about 1968. In Engineering, who didn’t take too much of a political stance. the reasons were a bit above our head. Although, we did think that Lord Salisbury was not the sort of old right-wing political buffer, who should hold that position. Wikipedia says this about the protest in 1970.
Apart from his political career Salisbury was Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 1951 until 1971. In 1970, students at the university staged an occupation at Senate House to demand his removal, over his support for apartheid and similarly reactionary views.
I think it is true to say, that today, anybody with those views wouldn’t hold such a position.
In the end Jon Snow was rusticated for organising the protest, but the University did later award him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2011.
C’s tutor at the University was Robert Kilroy Silk. He was also one of the organisers of the protest against Lord Salisbury, but I have read that at the last minute he didn’t turn up. It couldn’t have been because he was giving a tutorial to C, as she had graduated from the university in the previous year and we were living in London. Obviously, no punishment was handed down to Kilroy Silk.
C always found him odious and I can remember her stinking with tobacco smoke after she had been to one of his tutorials, where he chain-smoked Capstan Full Strength all the way through.
He obviously left the right impression on her, as once we were standing next to him at Newmarket racecourse and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get her to approach him and speak of her times at Liverpool under his tutelage.
So now I think justice has been done. Kilroy was here, briefly and Jon Snow is everywhere. Sadly C is no more, but I still have her memories of her tutor in my mind.
The Anonymous Widower 