Farringdon station – why no escalator from the Thameslink platforms?

This is the southbound Thameslink platform at Farringdon. It's huge. To get to street level you are required either climb these stairs, or the others at the far end, or take one of the two lifts between them. Hmmm.  

What's the good reason for not installing a moving staircase here?

Pre-2012 the area opposite the Farringdon Metropolitan Line tube station entrance looked like this retrospective Google streetview – an elegant 1920's building echoing the style of the station opposite designed by Charles Walter Clark which also served the Thameslink routes. 

Then the Elizabeth Line came to town and a swanky new box was created with an enormous concourse to delineate the train services on one side of the street and the tube services on the other.

Within this vast bland cavern they installed escalators for the Elizabeth Line, but not for the Thameslink platforms – why? 

My friend, who often works nearby suffers from claustrophobia and she hates this station if she is carrying luggage. If she arrives with a colleague they can take her bags in the lift whilst she climbs the stairs, but if she's travelling alone she has to rely on the kindness of strangers or lug the stuff up step by exhausting step. 

Read what I think about the Elizabeth Line's shoddy design here.

Mapping the Tube 1863-2023 – A chronology of Harry Beck's (and others') London Underground maps at The Map House, 54 Beauchamp Place

One for fellow map nerds and London Transport fans. There is an excellent exhibition at The Map House showing the evolution of the tube map, the like of which I am not sure has been seen before. 

In the gallery room at the rear of the shop there is an arrangement of framed pocket maps that clearly shows how the tube map has been adapted as new routes and stations have been added to comply with Harry Beck's original design.  

The first pic above shows the earliest folding pocket map printed in 1911. I found the wall of maps totally absorbing and for quite some time I played a kind of spot the difference comparing one map to the next, particularly interested in a period when both the Bakerloo and Northern lines were shown as parallel verticals.

Another thing that interested me was the inclusion of the Victoria line in the 1960s – first designed as a complete diagonal. On the opposite wall there are some of Beck's original pencil sketches which include this idea. 

There are also other unique pieces here as well as large format posters and folding maps. 

The exhibition was due to finish this month but they tell me it will now extend to mid-December

If you can't get to the exhibition before it closes, all the maps will continue to be available at the shop and online, as well as many other maps and globes and prints on various subjects etc. 

The Elizabeth Line wins The Stirling Prize 2024 – but how?! It's like a grubby version of Orwell's 1984 down there

When London's newest transit line first opened back in May 2022, some of my friends were quick to travel on it and kept asking me why I hadn't used it because, they said, it was marvellous. My reason was not that I was avoiding it, more that I didn't need it. Living in Holloway, North London, my most convenient rail routes into central London are the Victoria and Piccadilly lines and, as I explained, until I needed to travel to the eastern or western extremes, the Elizabeth line was of scant use to me. I am here using a cap E for Elizabeth only, as per other lines on the TfL network, yet I often see it written as 'The Elizabeth Line' which seems a bit much.   

My first experience of was from Stratford to Romford, having reached the former via the Overground line from Highbury and Islington. On that occasion, with my iPhone low on juice I was keen to recharge it and so I walked up and down the carriages scanning the walls and seat backs for charging points, a facility that is easily available on many other train lines including Thameslink and the Overground line, albeit not on the tube lines. But I couldn't find any sockets at all on the Lizzie line. I have subsequently discovered that there are a few USB ports on some of the trains – they can be found under the windows between the pairs of front and back-facing seats, as shown above = four ports per carriage. 

A second thing I found disappointing was the colour used for the interiors of the carriages, which is shades of gloomy grey. It's not so noticeable when travelling above ground in daylight but after dusk and/or when train goes underground within tunnels, it's gloomy. London is grey grey grey these days – I have often written on here about buildings being painted grey. 

Last year, I was near in near Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, when I saw a directional sign to the Elizabeth line so I thought I'd go and check out the station to see what it was like, and to and take a speedy route into town. With hindsight, I should have stayed above ground and walked to the nearest DLR station because it took ages to get anywhere near the trains. I had to navigate corridors, tunnels, stairs and escalators to finally reach a crowded dimly-lit platform where people queued at the door openings waiting for the next train to take them to their destiny (or doom), like living in a dystopian nightmare or being part of an immersive theatre production of Orwell's 1984* or Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I couldn't understand why there were so many people using the service at 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon? Did they do this every day?! It was horrible. Once on the train, it was packed with people, and dark and foreboding. I felt like I was being taken to an abattoir.  Oh the joy when I escaped at Whitechapel. Phew!  

But back to this year's RIBA Stirling Prize where the Elizabeth line is described as "flawless, efficient... beautifully choreographed solution...". Efficient perhaps, but 'flawless'? 

Earlier this year, on 17th May 2024, I used the service from Farringdon station, a few days before the line was approaching its 2nd birthday. I'm here using the pics I took on that day to tell the story from street level to the eastbound platform. 

As you enter from Cowcross Street, go through the ticket barriers and take the escalator to your right (not the escalator ahead of you unless you want to get a Thameslink train, the two lines not being interchangeable at lower level). At the bottom of the [correct] escalator you'll see that there is another escalator to the left of you, but a freestanding temporary signboard directs you to the right around a lightweight curved railing. 

If you look closely at the floor you can see that this curved railing has been installed as an afterthought, probably after they suddenly realised the clash of people on this concourse. Flawless? Efficient? I see poor planning, no forward thinking.

Then, as you approach the second escalator, there are dirty marks on the walls. Why? How? Do passengers (customers/clients/whatever we are these days) reach out and touch this, or is this mess made by maintenance staff?:

Down into the depths of the beast and, if you are in a hurry or have never been here before, it's hard to ascertain which way to go, left or right, to East or West? All it says is 'Elizabeth Line' in both directions, which is unhelpful to say the least. Certainly not efficient or beautifully choreographed. Only at the far end, beyond the people in this photo, will you finally find the information you seek:

People often tell me I am moaning or complaining. This is not so. I'm all for improving things, making them better. If a job's worth doing it's worth doing well, and all that. I am simply disappointed, especially as, in the case, the creases could have been ironed out before the project was completed. I am simply disappointed. This could have been so much better with a bit of forethought. 

Signage is key. Especially for the uninitiated, the one-time user, the visitor, the confused soul who has lost his way. But, here, the designers do not seems to have looked at these environments from the viewpoint of a user. Nor have they adequately tested the products used to see how they will fare going forward, never mind how they will be cleaned/maintained, evident by the many dirty, smeary marks along the corridors and platforms that it seems will now be with us until the station gets a complete makeover. Perhaps they'll simply paint it grey.

The walls panels are simply the wrong products for this environment. There are two issues here. First, the surface makes them perfect for holding onto dirt and, secondly, the dirt is therefore difficult to remove for the same reason, hence we see unsuccessful attempts to scrub away the filth by hand. 

Note that we are looking at just two years of grime and degradation on a product that should have never made it through all those years of R&D. I mean, jeez... Crossrail, as it was back then, was over ten years in the making, let alone the pre-planning. One would surely assume that they tested many different surfaces to see which would best suited for this situation. Also, what about all these silly undulating curved walls! How did the designers think these would be efficiently and adequately maintained? 

On the platform at Farringdon, you can find examples of ghostly shadows of people who have sat on the seats. I recall when this 'phenomenon' hit the news last year, thinking, 'er, wrong product, stop scrubbing, simply replace the wall panels.  

It's clear that they also didn't look into how this surface texture might also be problem in conjunction with their own self-adhesive information signs. Next time you are a platform, look out for strange stone effect patches of varying shapes and sizes that aren't quite the same as the walls, such as the one shown below right. This, I am reliably informed, is their solution to covering up the gluey mess left behind where a sticker has been removed. Efficient? I think not.  

In conclusion: Disappointing. Not flawless. Efficient as a train service, but not in the respect of interior design. They should look to the past to see that there is nothing more suitable than ceramic tiles, as within the old Victorian and Edwardian stations. 

*This is a reference to a version of 1984 now on at Hackney Town Hall. All I can say is, don't expect too much, because it's disappointing. The word 'immersive' is misleading, the condensed storyline is poorly imparted and the sound and visuals are hard to comprehend. You'll bet to walk up some stairs, put on an armband, walk back down the stairs, strain to see the 'stage' and then "bang!" it's over, please return your badge and armband on the way out. It was nice to see the inside some of the fabulous town hall though. 

Hold The Handrail – TfL's horribly confusing safety posters

I can't be the only one who finds Transport for London's safety posters rather ill-conceived. TfL's graphics do not enhance their messages – their posters are confusing.

The design team seems to have overlooked that many people who use the network are visitors and tourists from other countries for whom english is not their fist language, and it's no good mentioning a handrail in big bold capital letters if the handrail mentioned is not clearly indicated in the image, whether you understand the language or not. 

A depiction of a hand actually holding the handrail might have been a nice idea, with the words placed in such a way they they highlight/enhance the handrail in the graphic. I'm also surprised that none of the posters include a pleasantry or an explanation, such as 'For your safety, please hold the handrail'. 

Let's start with the buses – signs like these can be found at the top of the stairs on many routes:

At first glance, it appears to say, HOLD HANDRAIL. Ah, but no, there's a tiny little THE at the end of the stairs, looking like an afterthought. The message might make better sense if the 'designers' had aligned the words with the handrail(s) and, for clarity, added a hand holding the handrail at bottom left. Note the handrail is here depicted in yellow, but on this bus the rails are orange. 

A similar version of this can be found on the underground where the handrail is coloured black as per the moving handrails on escalators yet, but they've painted the side walls blue when, in reality, they are are actually silver colour. 

The handrails in the graphic are barely noticeable at all. The poster seems to be luring us into a golden sunset where a little white 'the' is waiting to take us down a fiery tunnel (to hell?). 

Travelling down the long Elizabeth Line escalators at Farringdon, I spotted this animated version which starts with the world HOLD in roman, then it becomes italicised as HANDRAIL appears across it in white. It wasn't until I looked at these pics that I noticed the word 'the' again hiding in there. 

These signs are bonkers. Someone took the time to design this. And someone else approved it. It beggars belief. 

I think at some point they realised that these posters make scant sense, so someone had the bright idea to link the word HOLD with the visual depiction of the handrail, thus we see a series of posters where the O appears like a ring on a curtain rail that, being fully circular, only slides up and down or laterally but can't let go of the rail, as shown below within the carriages:

Call me pedantic(!) but I am not sure many of us refer to a vertical pole as a handrail.

Moving on, they also created a series of alternative poster designs on this theme, as shown here below at Holborn station. These dispense with the chunky drop shadow letters, as shown above, instead using TfL's Johnston typeface:

These posters depict a mysterious androgynous figure, almost silhouetted at top right, who has speared a big Polo mint and is about to spin it around. Holborn station is slathered in signs of this design – on the platforms, in the tunnels that connect the Central and Piccadilly lines, before the escalators and pasted into the gaps between the escalators, as shown here, viewed from the bottom, the top and mid-journey (ascending):

Heading up towards street level, I struggled to snap the second two pics above. It's almost impossible to read these things as you glide past – you'd need to be at least 8ft tall to be able focus on them, let alone be able to read the content. The message is therefore lost in transit. 

At street-level, on the concourse, three of them are pasted on the wall:

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during the creative brief for this. I think the design department was first tasked to create the blue poster and, when someone slipped over on a wet floor, they adapted it for the green version and then realised that people with bags are an issue and so the purple poster was made. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the orange Don't Rush version was created.

If you read the smaller text here, you'll see that some of these posters advise us to use the lift which, here at Holborn, is misleading in two respects; 1) you might already be half way up an escalator at this point, and 2) there are no lifts at this station. Or stairs for that matter. 

The purple poster irks me the most and I wonder what message do they think they have conveyed here?  Considering how foreboding this is, what with the colour scheme of black and purple and that shady figure, it looks more like they are telling us to watch out for luggage thieves who might steal our suitcases. Or, perhaps that dark figure is supposed to be you/me, suggesting that we should hold the handrail whilst we slide our luggage ahead of us down the pole?!  Hmm, letting go of the bag is not a good idea and this is why I think another poster was created on this subject (see further down).

Got Luggage? Eurgh!  This kind of short question-heading is everywhere these days and I really don't like it. It requires us to do an upward inflection at the end when we notice the question mark! Add to that, the use of 'got/get' which is lazy and can always be replaced with something better.

On the subject of luggage, this next one is sublime, for all the wrong reasons...

The design style here is quite similar to the one on the buses. However, here, the two words that have been given the most visual emphasis are 'the' and 'too' – leaving the instruction to 'hold the handrail' lost within a red wheelie bag that seems to tell us that we should place our luggage sideways across the footplate, thus blocking up the space for anyone who wants to walk past. It certainly doesn't show us to hold the bag and the handrail which is what they are trying to say here. 

Ah, but, hold on, (see what I did there?!) this wheelie bag seems have made the journey up the escalator all by itself. Note that the handle is depicted as being away from us, suggesting that this is not our bag but the property of some poor soul who has let go of their luggage but is now out of view somewhere on the concourse at the bottom!

As regards the typography on this one, the message to 'hold the handrail' is completely muddled. It's as if someone recalled Katherine Hamnett's T-shirts back in the 1980s but didn't grasp that they work because the largest words in those statements were the ones that were the most important. Instead, here we see HOLD, the most important word, in italics on across the top of the bag, black on red (and vice-versa) being the worst pairing of colours for legibility. Instead, 'the handrail too' in white letters stands out as some kind of cryptic puzzle.

I was going to continue here and address some of TfL's other posters of this type but I think I will save them for another day.

In the meantime, please hold onto your hats and bags and handrails, in anticipation.

……

Update: w/c11Nov: I found another one – this is within the below ground tunnels at Waterloo:

This poster depicts a spiral staircase, yet is placed at the top of a straight flight of stairs. Note the depiction of teeny tiny treads on the stairs and I'm also querying the rotation of the spiral being as the one at my local station at Holloway Road curves round and down to the left, making it a clockwise descent. Do they vary station to station?

Baker Street station Hidden London tour into the non-public areas

Earlier this week I was lucky to be part of one of the test runs for one of the new tours run by Hidden London for London Transport Museum which took us into the back rooms and disused passages behind, beneath and above Baker Street station's many platforms. Indeed, I understand that Baker Street, with its many interconnecting rail and tube lines, has the most platforms of any station on the network.

I'd already been on Hidden London's tours of the tunnels beneath Euston station and the disused station at Highgate (having searched my old blogposts, I cannot now fathom why I didn't write reviews of those) and, three months ago I went on their excellent tour of the Holborn Kingsway tram tunnel, so I was intrigued to see what Baker Street station had to offer. 

I can confidently report that the tour is a diverse and fascinating delight, mainly due to the how the station has coped and evolved with the ever-expanding transport network and the need for customer connectivity. It was bizarre and fascinating to be looking down onto the curved roof of an escalator or standing almost hidden from view watching passengers (or is it customers, commuters or travellers?!) waiting for a Bakerloo line train. 

I especially liked seeing some lovely teal wall tiles in the disused sections that once housed the passenger lifts where there are also some remnants of old advertising posters, and I never before realised that there is tiled footbridge at the western end of the Circle and District line platforms which are available to use any day of the week. 

See all the Hidden London tours here – note that not all locations are available all the time, so it's well worth subscribing to be notified of updates to the schedule as these tours sell out fast. 

I'd also recommend a visit to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden and the larger Acton depot where you'll find lots more fascinating exhibits from bygone eras, such that you are bound to be pointing and exclaiming, "Oh I remember these!"

Hidden London tours of Kingsway Tram Tunnel

Two weeks ago I finally visited the disused tram tunnel underneath Holborn Kingsway, a subterranean passage that was built for public transport just below street level, linking North and South London via Bloomsbury and The Embankment. 

We met our guides at the top of the one in ten access slope at the junction of Southampton Row and Theobald's Road here. Note the impressive railings and lamp standards that protect the entrance. I'm simply going to show you some of my photos. 

The base of the central lamp directly above the tunnel entrance bears the cartouche LCC, London County Council 

Looking down at the rails. In some places you can see clear to the void below and we were advised not to let anything drop down there, because they wouldn't be able to get it back. Some old posters which I think were real as there are also hints of posters and signage installed more recently being as this tunnel has often been used as filming location.

My two photos show the steps leading up to the exit that was almost opposite Holborn tube station. The archive image is the other exit near Bush House and shows that in order to get to the tram platforms you had to play with the traffic at ground level

Ooh look, more wood blocks! And a lovely pattern of rails, and a modern Fire Exit sign, though I'm sure not quite as attractive as the ones of 100 years ago would have been. 

The large panels within the pic on the left are metal and these would have been used for advertising posters. They are still in amazingly good condition. I like abstract patterns made by colourful wires on sooty walls. 

There might be trams in Croydon, and I am sure that I heard about a decade ago, a proposal for trams to be reintroduced to Oxford Street etc, but, for many reasons, there are no plans to bring them back to this old subway. Today, most of this underground space is used by Camden Council to store redundant street furniture.

Rad blocks, barriers, lamp standards, and all sorts being stored here. 

I spotted some attractively-arranged storage in some of the recesses along the access slope. They look like little art installations. Surely this isn't an accident?! I think the curators probably use those two chairs and were off having a tea break when we were there!  

The southern section under Aldwych is still a functioning underpass, used by small vehicles rather than public transport, and headed northwards only. Access is from Lancaster Place at the northern end of Waterloo Bridge. Many years ago, when I had my little Fiat Panda, I used to love whizzing through there like I was in the Monaco Grand Prix, down the slope, swing to the right, swing to the left, emerging into Kingsway triumphant just before Portugal Street. And then sitting in traffic (of which I was part!). 

Pat and Kat were our guides on the day and their enthusiasm shone through. It's a really good tour, albeit a bit expensive, but you're only going to do it once. Find out lots more by experiencing the tour yourself through London Transport Museum's website here, where you'll also find archive images and more information.

Save Kings Cross Coach Station from demolition!!

Earlier this week I was walking towards Kings Cross Station along Euston after attending a talk at the British Library. I was horrified to look across the road and see that Belgrove House, until quite recently home to the Post Office, Access Storage and other companies, is currently wrapped in plastic with signs all around the whole block to Argyle Square telling us that demolition is in progress.  

These pics of the building, taken as screen shots from Google Streetview dated July 2022, show that demolition signs have been on the building since well before that date and, had I reinstated my 'All change here! guided walk about 1930s KX architecture this year I would have already noticed being as this building obviously features as a stop on the tour. 

Hey, it may not as impressive as it's counterpart in Victoria, but it's a well-constructed yet understated neo-Georgian style that sports many key 'Art Deco' motifs including Jazz Age metal grilles and elegant brickwork. 

Also, it's an important link to the past. But having already posted about this potential loss on my Facebook page, and gleaned responses, it appears that Camden Council have been negligent as regards their assessment of the site and the age of the building. It’s hard to believe, seeing as this sits a few doors down from Camden Town Hall, but they think the original coach station was demolished and replaced with this structure. Yet this is the bus station, not a replacement.  To my mind it’s the brick finish that confuses people. If interwar buildings aren’t rendered and painted white then people don’t recognise them.  Also worth mentioning that Victoria Coach Station didn’t look as bright when it was first built. Go google.  

Lazy idiots. Especially because photographic evidence of the building in the 1930s does exist and more info is available here, thanks to Save Bloomsbury, which also highlights that the building has been under threat since at least 2020. I am rather frustrated that I have only discovered all this now as having walked past the front of the building many times these past few years I hadn't noticed anything on the building declaring the plans. See here for December 2021 where, despite objections already being raised, there are no signs of change. wouldn't have seen this having researched the building in 2019 and not being able to lead walking tours during Lockdown. 

So, what's replacing it? Brace yourself... see last pic, below, for an artist's impression – there's plenty more across the web here.  

I'm thinking a 90 year lease was due to expire? The coach station building has been there for over eight decades and the external structure has always looked, to me, to be in very good condition. And I always admired how it had been sympathetically designed to fit in with the Georgian buildings that would have then stood at either side. I am not sure we can say the same of the high-rise proposal that will replace it which I very much doubt will be standing there for a similar time period. 

Oh and one more thing, M@ the Londonist guru points out that Oasis filmed Supersonic on the roof of the coach station – it has some great views of the surrounding area inc KX station. See here. 

This last pic sourced from here – akt-uk are the structural engineers working on the new build.

How do you pronounce Canonbury?

If you ever pass through Canonbury Square on a TfL 271 bus you will hear the automated announcement for the next stop. This bemuses me every time because the recorded female voice is heard to pronounce Canonbury as' Canon-burrie' turning the last part into something that rhymes with hurry or curry when it really it should be condensed to sound something like 'bree'. 

The bury ending for a place name indicates that there was once a castle, stronghold or fort at that location and it can also be found in many nearby places such as Highbury and Barnsbury, yet the on-board announcements for those are OK, so why has TfL got Canonbury wrong?!

Yes, I know it's an automated, patched-together, voice thing and I could almost forgive the error if she said it in the same way as the verb 'to bury' which is pronounced 'berry' and echoes the market town in Greater Manchester. But here in Canonbury, the misappropriated burrie thing makes no sense when there is no word that sounds like that at all. I mean, what is a burrie?

Isn't the English language fun?!

Feel free to enlighten me either in a comment of via jane@janeslondon.com

Recently I wrote about the coal hole cover plates in Canonbury Square, N1.

Thanks for the comments – for some reason I am unable to reply/comment myself at the moment (Sep2022)

The Changing Face of London – coming soon in 2000

One of the things I have been busying myself with during this period of lock-down and enforced islolation is a concerted effort to sort out, tidy up and/or get rid of a lot of the stuff I have managed to amass over the years.
So far I have rediscovered old diaries from my schooldays (hilarious reading!), alphabeticalised my music CDs, sorted my books into themes, watched a lot of the old films I'd recorded off the TV and forced myself to dismantle, crush and recycle lots of old cardboard boxes that up until now I just couldn't part with because "ooh, such a nice well-made box, that'll be useful one day". These I had saved like huge cuboid faceless Russian dolls.
During this declutter I found a large envelope full of cuttings from magazines and newspapers that hadn't as yet made it into my 'things that interest me' display books. I haven't updated that project for over a decade. I am very good at starting one thing and then getting distracted by another. Hence the many half-finished jumpers, jewellery, needlepoint, paintings and ideas for clay pipe fragments.
Oops – I've gone off on a tangent again...!
So, to the point...
I found this column torn from Time Out magazine, Feb 1994 – a list of the building projects expected in central London by 2000:

Rumours of a Museum of Modern Art somewhere on the Southbank

Interesting huh?!

When this virus is under control and we are given the 'all clear' it will also apply to the inside of my home. I can't be the only one having a major Spring clean – the charity shops will be inundated when they re-open and crying out for extra volunteers. Meanwhile, I am free-cycling – my neighbours have been snapping up the books and unwanted items that I have been leaving on the garden wall.
Stay safe and healthy.

Art Deco architecture in Central London

Oops, I let the blog posts take a back seat whilst I have been researching new walking tours these past few months.
Spurred on by the success of my Art Deco era guided walks in Shoreditch, Holloway, Spitalfields, The City, Camden and Arsenal, I can now offer a few more. Specifically Piccadilly, KX/StPancras, Soho, HattonGdn/Smithfield, Covent Garden and Bloomsbury all of which include less-visited unsung gems in the back streets.
In-depth info and how to book here.
Or visit my Jane's London Walks where you'll also find a quick-to view schedule.
I hope you can join me one day.

Hatton Garden to Smithfield – Modernism, Markets, Meta and Mysteries

St Giles to The Strand  – Flappers, Fashion, Fruit and Footlights

Soho Deco – Movies, Music and Motor Cars

Piccadilly Deco – Slacks, Flicks and Slots

All Change! St Pancras and Kings Cross in the 1930s