Recently in tube Category

Some advice for passengers on London Underground.

When the tube breaks down and the announcements are telling you to use alternative routes, in the vast majority of cases you are better off staying where you are and waiting for the problem to be fixed.

It seems to be standard operating procedure in these cases that tube staff try to get as many people off the tube as possible. And they'll keep giving that advice right up to the moment before the tube moves on.

Here's an example. Last night I got to Moorgate at about 17:15. There was a tube in the station. A few people were getting off. I got on. As I got on there was an announcement that there was no service on the line due to a person being taken ill a couple of stops down. More people got off. I got a seat (another good side effect of these situations). We sat there for about five minutes with announcements every thirty seconds that strongly implied that the tube wasn't going anywhere for some time and that we'd be better off walking home. A few more people got off, but most of us (the ones who knew how this usually works) stayed put.

And then suddenly one of these announcements was followed by a different voice announcing that the train was about to leave. And off we went.

Had I followed their advice, I would have added thirty minutes to my journey home. By ignoring them I ended up getting home five minutes later than expected.

Ignore the advice. Stay on the tube.

In the entrance hall to all tube stations you'll find a notice board telling you how each line is currently running. It's worth noting that when the sign says a line has "good service", what they actually mean is that it has "the expected level of service".

It's a subtle, but important, distinction.

My Amazon wish list took quite a battering (but in a good way) over christmas so I needed to find some new things to put on it. Luckily a shopping trip to buy presents for other people gave me plenty of inspiration.

A new (ish - well I can't remember seeing it before) Books etc shop opposite John Lewis on Oxford St had a larger than usual section of books on London and that contained a number of interesting looking books about the London Underground.

Anyone interested in the tube will already have a copy of Mr. Beck's Underground Map which traces the history of Harry Beck's version of the London Underground map. What I hadn't seen was a sequel to that book called Underground Maps after Beck which brings the history of the map up to date. And there's also No Need to Ask! Early Maps of London's Underground Railways which completes the story by looking at maps before Beck.

Another interesting book was Spread of London's Underground which shows how the tube has expanded (and, sometimes, contracted) over the years. It does this by showing what today's tube map would look like if it only contained the parts of the system which where open at various dates throughout the system's history. Combine that with London's Lost Tube Schemes and London's Disused Underground Stations for a pretty complete understanding of the tube's history.

And looking a bit wider, there's always Metro Maps of the World which contains maps of metro systems from almost two hundred world cities.

Did you know I was also a tube geek?

Every Londoner has done it at some point. A packed tube pulls into the station, but the carriage that stops in front of you is surprisingly empty. But it's early in the morning and you're only half awake so instead of being suspicious you just get on.

And just as the doors close, your nose alerts you to the problem. An extremely unpleasant smell is coming from the rather dirty person slouched motionless across three of the seats in the carriage. There's nothing you can do until the train stops at the next carriage. You just stand there as far away from the source as possible. But you can't help looking back as morbid curiosity makes you wonder if he has died.

That was me on the Central Line this morning[1]. The end of a particularly nasty journey to work.

[1] By which I don't mean I was the smelly dead person. I hope that's obvious.

Originally seen on geeklife.co.uk.

This morning my tube was held up at Bond St for ten minutes and three carriages (including mine) were evacuated. All because someone left their bag behind when they got off the tube.

Of course, London Underground's method of investigating this was for the driver to wander up and carefully look into the bag.

I was hiding round the corner.

Please people. Now more than ever. Take your bloody bags with you.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I'm just throwing it out there as a data point.

Everyday we get tube disruptions in London (just look at Stef's tube map). Some days are better than others.

Today was a really bad day. And I'm not talking about this afternoon when incompetent bombers shut down large parts of the tube system. I'm talking about this morning.

I needed to travel from White City to Chancery Lane to get to a meeting this morning. As we pulled out of Tottenham Court Road the driver said that he'd just heard that the next station (Holborn) was closed. So we just passed through it without stopping. Chancery Lane was the next stop so I got off. By the time I left the tube station the tannoy was announcing that services were being withdrawn from large sections of the Central Line. Judging by how late other people were to the meeting, that problem took about half an hour to clear.

Then I had to get back to White City after the meeting. I got on the tube at about 11:45. The journey should take about twenty minutes. It was about forty-five minutes later that we got to White City. I wasn't really listening to the announcements (too deep in conversation) but I'm sure they were saying something about problems at Shepherd's Bush.

But we travelled through the other Shepherd's Bush station[1] to the one where the bomb was.

I'm just saying that there were a lot of disruptions on the Circle Line today - even before the major disruptions started. And I'm wondering if someone (whether that's the Police or London Underground or someone else) had a hint that something was going to happen.

[1] Shepherd's Bush station is one of a very small number of places which has two completely different tube stations in different locations that share the same name. I swear we do it to confuse the tourists.