tube stations

Golders Green - because the platforms are outdoors, a nice view of suburbia. The awnings around the roof are arrowed, white-painted wooden slats from the Twenties. This detail reminds me of The Railway Children and other cosy children's books where urchins wait for steam trains to take them to adventures (Box of Delights, Narnia & c.). The effect is especially strong in winter when you're waiting for a train in your coat and scarf and breathing vapour into the cold air.

South Ken - love the art deco feel, with the lead pewter frontages, and built-in market.

Gloucester Road - I like the art they commission there. Big modern sculptures.

From the inside: Bermondsey (huge great big concrete blocks *and* pretty foliage!)

The worst, by a mile, and in every way I can think of, is Bond Street.

Of open tube stations the New Jubbly Line ones (Canada Water & Canary Wharf) are magnificent space age things of joy, whilst Arnos Grove is Art Deco Heaven.

I honestly can't think of my favourite tube station. I will have to give this some more thought. Some of the district line stations are rather charming out to the (EEESH) west.

Tom, I do think you meant Park Royal. Maybe that is my favourite tube station too, because it is next to an arcade with THE FIRST MIX OF DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION! O Boom Boom Dollar how I love thee.

Actual station itself though, I like the new Jubilee line ones, particularly Canary wharf and Bermondsey (I think)

Bad ones = dollis Hill (nasty and grubby) Baker street (smells of wee)

Earl's Court is rubbish apart from the ace train indicator light boxen. Park Royal is great from outside, but I've never been in it. White City has a certain amount of charm as well.

Flash forward a few years, Sarah is drunk and swaying at Earls Court station. Train to Ealing Broadway! Where is a Wimbledon train? Sarah slumps to the floor and starts drunkenly crying. Actually, YEAH DAMMIT! I HATE EARLS COURT!

Ricky T: similar (if slightly nearer) two-station tomfoolery at Edgware Road. When you are the King, which Shepherd's Bush will you rename, and (urgent & key question) what will it be called?

I luurrrrrve the DLR.

Or we could rename one station Eyepatch and the other one Treasure In The Hold. Howabout that?

Holborn and Tottenham Court Road both have nifty tricks like this with save mucho time.

Whoever mentioned Colindale: yep, one of my favourite outlying stations. The Central Line Shepherd's Bush has some truly wonderful 1920s posters of the "come to lovely rural Twickenham" stripe. Earl's Court is fabulous. I have too many fond memories of the Charing Cross and Embankment areas to say a word against those stations.

Most thoroughly uninteresting, overheated and dull: Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road.

I remember Theydon Bois station being positively rural on my only visit there many years ago.

Being a daily JLE user, I'm spoiled by being used to the glass screens which separate fragile human from dangerous high voltage rail. But I'm starting to feel unsafe when I stand on open platforms these days.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the New Cross stop. :-)

Could be my imagination. Did once have a dream as a child that there was a spiral within the Circle Line (coloured dark purple) and at the centre was a station called Ram. More recently dreamt of a BR station called Banana. I'm not fishing for interpretations here.

Another woefully vaguely-named tube station is Southwark: no-one refers to that area as Southwark. Apparently some local residents ran a campaign to have it named The Cut instead (which would have been better for reasons of geographical specificity and general coolness). But oh no. LU knew better. Bah.

Swiss cottage as long as the escaltors are still old school

the north west london picadillly ones

NY subway stations are very functional though aren't they

So, I supose I like Embankment.

Spent most of Saturday in the pub cackling over the Hipster Line meme, talking about the East London line extension - New Cross, Shoreditch, Hoxton, Dalston and Hackney. We decided that you would not need a ticket or Oyster card to board, you would merely show the most obscure tune on your iPod.

Has this been discussed before? Maybe been in an issue of Smoke?

Hooray.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/press-centre/press-releases/press-releases-content.asp?prID=534

It wil indeed cross the Kingslan Rd Above rather than below.

Like I said, I'm not getting an Oyster Card. I demand to be able to pay by iPod. Oh wait, except I haven't got one. And I don't ride the tube anyway.

Now feel free to continue to miss the point...

Martin, even I got one, so you're clear for takeoff.

Forget it.

OH NO!

they're all shit, incidentally.

highgate st also horrible as the worst place you could possibly be trying to get on a northern line southbound at 8.14am and for sneaking into zone 3

We're about to lose our Morrisons/Safeway, though (local gossip - nothing official) with nothing lined up to take its place. Budgens opens Thursday opposite (and intending to put out of business) Sergio's deli, where I occasionally see TV's Mark Steel with his lovely daughter. Much local fuss over planned hotel building on the park. The number 3 bus is showing improved reliability.

And back to Kate and Marcello in the studio...

Now, closer to home, is Streatham ever going to get The Tube? Or would it ruin our local flavour? The planned Hub development is already ruining our ice rink, our go-karting bus garage and The Streatham Guardian has been noticing a terrible ... smell emannating from the swimming pool at the Leisure Centre. When can we import some hipsters to sort this out? They're getting new swimming pools in Hackney to bathe their hipsters, so don't forget about us.

I misread that as Brightons.

(This was the only thing I knew about Stokey when I first moved to London - that there were apparently lesbians there. Some pointy nosed blond Irish dirty rock boy took me to a party there.)

Follow the trailblezzers!

What's so bad about Bank, though?

1. Croydon is hip (it's the new Detroit)!!
2. I used to work for TfL!!!

North Acton is another of the most obscured overground tube stations perhaps - you can't see the exit/entrance from the main road, and you can only see the platform itself from the upstairs of the 266 or 220 as they pass over the bridge towards/away from Willesden Junction - or by standing on your toes and looking over the bridge from the pavement.

East Acton is also very tucked away from any main road, ditto West Harrow and Ickenham. And Watford famously lulls you into a suburban idyll far from the horrors of the Harlequin Centre.

Who is "The Russian", for example?

xp ah

in the 'Fit But You Know It' video i'm convinced the park Skinner walks in is the one between South Harrow and Sudbury Hill.

the one in hammersmith is also dying - they started by taking the top shelf off all their aisles and now they keep spreading the few remaining articles out along the racks as thinly as they can, one row of everything, right at the front. name brands are mysteriously missing (no head and shoulders) and some are suspiciously plentiful (an whole aisle of Corn Flakes). it's like cold war russia. (whereas the actual hammersmith highstreet looks like beruit with all the roadworks))

shepherd's bush (h&c) smelt so strongly of ganja the other week. i get enough of that at work...

I thought it was to make it more convenient for old people or something. They actually decreased half the floorspace to make a mysterious room where god knows what goes on.

I really hope they don't close ours because it's a long walk to Sainsburys and it's more expensive. (Lord knows what will happen when they build the planned Tescos they're giving us instead of a tube.)

they haven't got round to rebranding the Stoke N Safeway yet it seems.

But whatever will happen to the Romanian orphans and that weird shoe shop whose shoes never fit my feet (and actually did me long term foot damage, come to think of it)?

When Morrisons bought Safeway, part of the agreement was that they sold a large tranche of stores to Waitrose for competition reasons.

Yes, it would be good if everyone moved to Crystal Palace. Upper Norwood? No, they moved of their own accord.

I'd like them to sort this Morrisons business out first though.

"Keith Barrett" kept addressing "Hammersmith" on Jack Dee last night. I thought of the Koogmeister. It was very funny by the way. I stayed up late.

I'm sorry, I'm finding this unreasonably upsetting.

http://www.perivale.co.uk/images/tesco-supermarket-pic1-448-336.jpg

If you were at Morrisons, you should have held out for the fizzy pink strawberry wine which is only marginally more expensive at £1.49 a bottle on sale. (I still have a bottle of this in the bottom of my fridge awaiting the next rehearsal at my house.)

Blimey, remember when this was a thread about the Tube, and not supermarkets and booze? x-post

i suppose i mean sea level and from the platform only. i wonder if the underground stations built under high ground (Highgate? Hampstead?) are still higher than some overground stations on low ground (Gunnersbury? Hammersmith Picadilly/District? White City?) but it's hard to tell how far above sea level you are at many stations esp. ones like North Acton where the entrance is high but the platform low and entrenched in a valley of sorts, despite being only two stops from super high Perivale.

The train itself stays at the same altitude throughout its journey. Just a guess.

this would be absolutely no fun, so i'm not going along with it.

i hear snoring at the back there now, so am sticking with Perivale for highest overground platform.

Also compare King's Cross with the next stop, Angel (slight xpost with Dave). We forget that Islington's on a hill if we are not involved with Pentonville Road on a pedestrian basis.

But that wouldn't be a problem if the track was higher when it was underground than when it was overground. Apparently Hampstead is 58m below ground level - all we need now is the altitude of Hampstead.

At least, that's what I think it said in my Underground London book.

Highest point on system 150 metres Amersham (Metropolitan) - 482 feet
Maximum depth below sea level 21.3 metres Waterloo (Northern)
Greatest height above ground 18.3 metres Dollis Brook Viaduct (Northern Line over Dollis Road) - 59 feet
Deepest below ground 67.4 metres Hollybush Hill, Hampstead (Northern) - 221 feet

http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/Statistics.htm

!!!!!

this is troubling me now. archway to highgate takes way long imo, and iaccount for it in terms of the train having to go uphill (which i think it does, goes highgate escalator is shortness, as ken said).

Bear in mind that the Barnet line north of Highgate was originally an above-ground suburban line (it ran out of Kings Cross), and that High Barnet itself is - a Barnet resident once assured me - the highest point between the Thames and Yorkshire.

and

I would imagine that most of them are roughly about the same height above sea level to get around the whole station flooding angle.

i want to agree suzy but i just can't. this will throw my whole world off its axis coz my ears rountinely pop, like when diving or flying, on the central line especially. this would point to changes in air pressure and thus some stations being deeper/less deep than others. vicky's post *may* explain this, but i have my doubts because it would mean you go up and down all the time whenever you come into a station, getting that sleeping policeman effect. you don't really. i am worried about this and am going to phone london underground to find out.

Presumably the tunnel rises again from Shepherds Bush to Holland Park in relation to the higher ground at the latter, though if you look west from the platform at Shepherds Bush it drops lower down - so Holland Park would have one or more escalators than Shepherds Bush perhaps.

Also the Northern Line is quite steep.

I don't know how much of this is imagination and how much is cold hard fact.

i want to believe.

I have been searching the web for London Underground gradient profile diagrams, and failing.

(they must have some, because all railways have them - whether they are on the web is another question)

Blimey, I'd forgotten Wimbledon had a tube!

It doesn't!

xpost: what, so the North London Line is a tube too, is it?

It doesn't!

hence the irate colonies of wombles!!

DLR, however, is. So I guess that's a tube, even though it's not.

But the District Line is The Tube and that's the end of it!

Why is there such abject pedantry about tube status?

Yes, it probably is. More modern tunnels have more cross-passages to reduce ear-popping - the Channel Tunnel, for example.

Does Kew Gardens station still have a bar on the platform? District Line trains are horrible (except the one that goes to Edgware Road as it's akin to the H&C ones) but journeys on it can be among the most beautiful to be experienced on the network e.g. passing over the bridges at Kew and Putney, gliding between Chiswick and Ravenscourt Parks. It's pretty dull between Whitechapel and Upminster though.

(or whichever company operates the North London Line now)

PS - how deep is the Thames?

I'll answer my own question, just in case anyone is desperate to know and hasn't heard of google. In town about 2m at the lowest tide and about 9m at the highest.

Staggering Thames facts here

http://static.flickr.com/42/75176723_72786f9912.jpg

as for the most obscure generally I stand by Woodside Park with it's forgettable 'anywhere' name:

http://static.flickr.com/6/75176731_c3f0d67569.jpg

Is Canons Park considered obscure?

I can't wait to find out what Mill Hill East is like.

Woodside Park
Barkingside
Fairlop
Canons Park
Elm Park
Colliers Wood
Northfields
Upney
Sudbury Hill
Becontree
Stonebridge Park

quick - where do you find pinner?

:)

I'm very familiar with it. There's a half-circular forecourt with a bus stop (naturally) and the train arrives via a bridge that cuts just over the main road (whose name escapes me). You arrive at the platform via a single steep staircase - one platform, very very long. You can make out lights from central London on clear nights. Waits for a train 14 minutes and up.

Sorry, I'm getting teary...

Pretty underrated.

xp

xpost

But talk about far-flung South stations, and I'm baffled.

It made me king of teh internets for about two seconds.

ROFL

xp - as a child I accidentally sprayed Terry from Terry & June with a stray garden hose while on holiday in Cyprus.

My Dad lives in South Kenton, but yes I probably should've put that on the list.

ooooh remind me who this might be please.

worst station: elephant & castle vs victoria

e&c. victoria is kind of bogstandard. navigating e&c is impossible.

it only has two lines, it ain't that hard! walking along northern platform to get to bakerloo isn't great though.

omg -- unrelated to this -- i had no idea that bank branch between camden and euston is WEST of cc (mornington crescent) branch!!!

e&c is terrible, the fact that there are only two lines just exacerbates it. its the only station ive ever got lost in

the bank branch thing of the northern is one of a couple of quirks like that i think,

this is a work in progress but click here to load massive table of square thumbnail images showing the exterior of (eventuall) every station on the LU network

Old Street - I like to speak in a robot voice, "COMRADE KLEBB YOUR MISSION IS INFILTRATE THE VORTEX AND LOCATE THE STIMMUNG DEVICE", then you come out going DUN-DUN-DUN in the middle of the Universal Crossroads - there are tramps, who I call the Cerebrus 4x Guardian 'Zoids - you have to run past them screaming "PHASERS TO STUN! PHASERS TO STUN" It is a lot of fun to do this. I also like Warren Street as there is a cute woman who works there but I am too shy to engage her.

Search: The Paddington station that was formerly called Praed St (formerly Met. Rly, now Circle and District). Mile End. The MDR part of Ealing Broadway. Earls Court.
Destroy: KXSP. Euston. Camden Town. Tottenham Court Road.

The all-time best Underground station, though, is Arnos Grove.

> massive table of square thumbnail images

cool. but...

a) needs a title="name" on each img tag so that putting your mouse over them shows the name
b) they need to be actual thumbnails rather than the pictures forced to 50x50 by html. quality will be better, bandwidth a lot less, loading quicker. make them link to the original.

best overground: Chiswick Park

like i say it's a work in progress koogs

Thread synchronicity! Many posters with 3d cutaway station diagrams:
http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/themes/theme_sub.html?IXtoptheme=London's%20transport%20system&IXthemeid=1.EX0?.P

Pinner's meaning = it's where Terry & June are from.

And for me, Perivale = Ghost Light

Talking of 3d, I noticed on a recent trip on the Piccadilly Line that someone had produced an alternative 3d overview of the line for some art project or other. Has anyone else seen this? If so, do you have any more info - I failed to make a notice of the artist's website. In fact I already like the standard Piccadilly Line 3d map, but can't find any links to it on the net. Help gratefully received

I'll be going back on the Piccadilly this eve, will see if I can spot anything.

This is an amazing thread: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00005W&topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E%2eT%2e

It struck me the other day that West Ham station feels absolutely enormous, given its provinciality and theoretical simplicity.

Thanks ledge

x-post TCR station, though horrible, is redeemed by the Paolozzi mosaics somewhat.

The Paolozzi mosaics are nice, but TCR station is so awful as to completely overshadow that.

what makes it that much worse than numerous other zone 1 underground stations with no surface building?

they make you walk down.

I like the dystopian FPS style spiral staircase down to the Northern Line, all concrete and rust, exposed cables and chickenwire. Hope they never fix that up.

Also an exit for every corner of TCR = much better than Oxford Circus.

i don't like stations that end up in shopping precincts. bond st. high st ken (i think). hammersmith.

Gunnersbury is very poor.

south ken, old st, baker st... xpost

Most of the new Jubilee ones are fantastic. The blue ceiling in Southwark is gorgeous, especially the way it unfolds in front of you as you come up the escalator.

I like Highgate--not really the station itself, but the walk down the bank to the station.

I love the fact that it's shut

daniel you should post that picture of leicester square station and the FCUM scarf?

I wonder how many have a cash machine in them.

and how many of them are out of cash

Daniel do you mean this?:
http://thincities.tfl.gov.uk/projects/artist-further-information.php?id=12

Most sadistic thing (of many) about the tube: late night interchange at Edgware Road. Every weekend, on my way home from a pal's, I would get a circle line/H&C train from Baker Street into platform 4, only to see my Wimbledon train's doors close and pull away from platform 3.

25 minutes' wait for the next one - the last train of the night. 25 minutes to marvel at my staggering misfortune, every sodding week. Only recently have I realised that Edgware Road's the terminus, so it's scheduled like that

re: that Piccadilly map
It's always bugged me that there seems to be some kind of west London bias with the Piccadilly line. Those tourist 3d maps show all kinds of stuff to the west, but seem to consider Kings Cross to be more or less the end of the universe. And the platforms in town are always labelled 'eastbound' and 'westbound'. Having commuted (in the past) Turnpike Lane - Leicester Square and later Finsbury Park - Russell Square I've always thought of it as 'northbound' and 'southbound', so those signs make no sense to me.

Daniel do you mean this?

I surely do.

Thanks very much indeed.

Ken, nice idea about the scarf photo - I'll get onto that later when I get a mo.

of course they do, Nasty, they're tourist maps! If tourists starting going to Wood Green they might tell their friends how horrible it is and no foreigner will ever grace our shores ever again!

The site ledge passed on has a lovely map of the piccadilly line. http://thincities.tfl.gov.uk/?flash=2 click on any station to see a photo

damn them they are stealing my idea

of course they do, Nasty, they're tourist maps! If tourists starting going to Wood Green they might tell their friends how horrible it is and no foreigner will ever grace our shores ever again!

cockfosters would make a nice drawing though

having a 26 station commute, all on the piccadilly, from the central stations i think of it as westbound and northbound

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2485/3915868255_13d3aa55ed_b.jpg

New Tube map is lacking, err, the river and the zones?

underground failway

The fact that the East London Line is still extant there makes me feel that it is not the new tube map, not at all

although it has the Woolwich DLR extension so I am confused :-/

probably a good move really - the river isn't particularly relevant info and it makes the waterloo/victoria problem (victoria is not further north than waterloo) less noticeable

Zones were only a recent edition to the pocket map and I can see the reason for moving the river. It's a schematic diagram and clarity is everything.

Nah it's new - the DLR line running to Woolwich Arsenal is pretty much brand new.

The East London Line technically *is* still there, odd decision not to put the under construction extension there though.

(xpost)

Bigger: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blech/3915868255/sizes/o/

It looks horrible without the river. Makes no sense at all.

? i thought there were loads of versions of the tube map without the river on?

looking crazy cluttered there, though.

'change here for wheelchair'

There actually isn't any reason for the river to be on there.

Can't see why they took the zones off though, even in the Oyster era.

no reason to remove it either!

don't think it confused anyone.

no reason to remove it either!

It would have to be fairly contorted to pass the DLR in the right place

although i guess it is actually that shape anyway. hmm.

National Rail symbol now Tory blue as opposed to Commie red.

they wouldn't remove the river from the teatowels etc. that would be dickish.

Yeah sensibly fitting the river around the new DLR stations without stretching the line off the end of the page would account for removing it, I think.

Imagine the panic and screaming horror when residents of Fulham/Highbury/Gentrified Hackney realise they might inadvertently be going south of the river.

is East London line extension still running to Croydon? fitting all of that on there gonna be tough

Imagine the panic and screaming horror when residents of Fulham/Highbury/Gentrified Hackney realise they might inadvertently be going south of the river.

'we're getting off at Tottenham Court Road, just to be safe'

Think the river has been removed and added a few times over the years. Overall I prefer its presence to its absence

Removing the river has allowed them to straighten some of the lines.

Lots of other little changes here if you're interested: http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html#1376769898974718124

Diamond Geezer is your go-to-guy for any Tube map queries.

Max Roberts in that comment thread is author of this book: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~mjr/underground/underground.html

That website ticks most of my nerdometer boxes.

tards

this is really cool: seems like a lot of the pre-Beck tube maps didn't have the thames, either.

http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=11287

A very interesting read, thanks.

In case anyone didn't already know, Boris is going to announce Tube fare increases on Thursday.

So the Circle Line is no longer going to be a circle?!?!?

http://londonist.com/2009/11/circle_line_uncircling_set_for_dece.php

I've never done the whole circle line.

I should probably get around to doing it within the next few weeks, or I never will.

It's becoming the Spiral Line!

AARGTFGGGGHHHH... stuck in a downward spiral line?

It's not quite as exciting as you might think. A bit like going over the top on a paternoster lift for instance.

I don't understand the point of this at all. I mean this entirely served by existing stations, unless you want to take a really long stupid route from Hammersmith to, say, Westminster or something.

The London Underground? Doing something useless and needlessly complicated and redundant which serves no purpose at all except to confuse people? NEVER!

I don't understand the point of this at all. I mean this entirely served by existing stations, unless you want to take a really long stupid route from Hammersmith to, say, Westminster or something.

Well, yeah. But the point is that the stations aren't well served by trains. Having spent far more time than I would like on the platform at Westbourne Park waiting for an H&C train, I'm quite looking forward to this.

so is the "H&C line" no more?

so why don't they just...increase the number of h&c trains?

Presumably the H&C will stay as well for that journey eastwards? Especially for the ease of getting from Liverpool Street to Aldgate East, which is a nightmare of ringroads and poor crossings on foot.

so why don't they just...increase the number of h&c trains?

^^^^^^^^^^^^ this would seem to me the most sensible option?

I came up with a sage and reasonable explanation of why this is not the most sensible option but now I can't remember what it was. So let's just accept it, eh?

Surely, increasing the number of H&C trains is more sensible - going west from Aldgate East is terrible, not likely to get better it seems.

Actually, going from Liverpool Street to Aldgate East is now the only possible justification for the Hammersmith & City Line - everything else will be replicated by the Circle, District or Metropolitan Lines.

Bloody east London olympic people! Want to de-West London the tube net work! Sad news :(

Surely, increasing the number of H&C trains is more sensible - going west from Aldgate East is terrible, not likely to get better it seems.

Remembered my explanation! They can't introduce more H&C trains because although there's loads of room between Hammersmith and Paddington, once the Metropolitan and Circle lines join it, the track is pretty much at capacity. This way all they're doing is increasing the number of trains on that particular stretch of track without affecting the overall quantity which they don't have room for.

Maybe.

no, that's what i figure too. there's three different lines on the same track! i've always thought that was madness.

The long-rumoured plan for a potential divorce of the Northern line has apparently been confirmed by the man in charge of the route.

The idea, which has existed since at least TfL's Transport 2025 document (released 2006), is to have two, distinct lines: one running from Edgware to Kennington (and possibly beyond to Battersea) via Charing Cross, the other from High Barnet to Morden via Bank. The current cross-dressing at Camden Town, where the lines flip over each other, would come to an end, meaning that if, say, you were travelling from Archway to Embankment, you would need to change at Camden. Same goes if your trip runs from Hampstead to Old Street.

Responding to questions by a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, Northern line general manager Pat Hansberry confirmed that TfL plans to split the line for the evening rush hour by the end of the decade, and said that the system was already being implemented for northbound trains in the morning.

I'm sure they have their reasons. Would love to know what they are. They stopped doing the northbound switch at Kennington - all trains from Morden now go via Bank, Charing X served solely by the loopback from Waterloo. Fortunately i don't live at Kennington any more and don't go through it much, otherwise i'd find it hugely irritating.

I got a Northern Line train yesterday from TCR to Stockwell, so they do still occasionally run through (but that's maybe not what you meant).

yeah it's only northbound they're segregated. although that should mean charing x branch gets fewer trains, if some southband charing x trains still go all the way ... i'm only ever there in the evenings, perhaps it's time dependent. can't find any info on tfl.

can barely call myself a tube nerd with the lack of knowledge i'm displaying here tbh

Dammit, that would mean I wouldn't be able to get a direct train into work. Though hopefully it would do something to clear up the terrible congestion between Camden and Euston.

Should do as most of the congestion is caused by the crossover. Loads of people on every train changing at Camden isn't going to be much fun though.

http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/punch_cartoon.gif

http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/punch.html

live train map of the london underground:

http://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/

Far better than the Paris Metro, on that the stops are too close together and the train looks like a little car

Never been on any undergrounds apart from those two though - anyone else? How does the New York one compare?

new york subway is dirty but relatively reliable. chicago's el train is great, though not always underground. my one trip on DC's subway, water was leaking from the train ceiling via the overhead lighting onto a chair across from me.

The tube in Athens is fantastic.

(Athens, Greece. Olympic legacy in action.)

Barcelona is great and cool and air conditioned.

The above link shows the Jubilee Line atm at a standstill from Canary Wharf to Waterloo. So it's accurate then.

Is Barcelona's an Olympic underground too?

It began operating in the 1920s I think. I'm not sure how much updating was done with Olympic money. After years of sweltering in the London tube between May and September, I was just really, really taken by how cool it was.

The Glasgow subway is freezing and that opened in 1896.

The London tube is cold between 6-7 am btw Oct and April.

The Glasgow subway is freezing and that opened in 1896.

― Madchen, Friday, July 19, 2013 5:32 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm always a bit freaked out by the amount of water sloshing round the tracks/platforms on the glasgow underground

I grew up with the Liverpool underground - which was fine and worked pretty well. It's only about 4 stations but I never cared about the heat. I think it's an age thing.

Normally find the tube-maps-with-different-things-on-them meme a bit tired, but thought this was actually interesting:

http://usvsth3m.com/post/52135944891/ghost-stations-of-the-london-underground-on-the-classic

Bilbao's underground system is nice.