National Railway Museum's Director of Fun

Did you know the National Railway Museum had a seven year old Director of Fun? He was appointed last year after applying to replace the retiring director. Train mad Sam, decided to apply for what would be a dream job, and was pretty surprised to get a role.

Asked what qualified him for the role at the railways museum, he answered: "I've been on loads of trains, including the Eurostar." All we need now is a similar applicant for the London Underground


Anyway, part of Sam's duties appear to searching around for bloggers to send rock too. I was lucky enough to be on his hit-list. I'm a sucker for rock (sorry!) and liked the puntastic "Chew, Choo, Choose, The NRM" label.

I visited the National Railway Museum in York many years ago before the internet existed. But I'd certainly be keen to visit again to see how it's doing under Sam's Directorship.

There's a load of Summer holiday activities for kids and kids at heart, including a sand sculptor making a train from 20 tonnes of sand and the opportunity to climb inside the steam engine "Olton Hall" from the Harry Potter films. Entry is free although is a small charge for some activities.

Bond Street Tube to get £300m facelift

TfL have just awarded the contract to redevelop Bond Street London Underground station to a joint venture between Costain and Laing O'Rourke. Construction is set to be mostly complete by 2016 in time for Crossrail in 2017. However, a £150M risk contingency fund has been added because of fears over inflation during the programme.


Currently over 155,000 people use Bond Street Tube station each day and that's expected to increase to more than 225,000 when Crossrail is finished.

London Underground's work will focus on the north side of Oxford Street in an attempt to increase capacity and create step free access to the station.

A new contract will be awarded by Crossrail in due course. This work will involve constructing two new ticket halls, excavations for two east-west platform tunnels with interconnecting additional access routes and escalator shafts. The western ticket hall at Davis Street (south of Oxford Street) will be built underground. The eastern ticket hall (an artist's impression pictured above) will be in Hanover Square.

The station will also get the benefit of improved pedestrian areas with new seating and lighting.

If you're worried this is going to stop people shopping in the West One centre, don't be. Work is due to start next year and the operations manager of the shopping centre said: "We will remain as we are. They will do the work around us. We are not closing."

For more on the redevelopment see TfL's site.

First Air Conditioned Tube Train

This morning saw the official launch of the first London Underground train with air conditioning. It will run on the Metropolitan Line and is part of the 191 fleet of new walk through trains. However, many people were around on Saturday when the train made its first appearance at Watford.


First S Stock train in passenger service 31-07-2010 by londonstuff
Londonstuff was one of the first travellers and has a great set of photos and a couple of videos of the ride.


First S Stock train in passenger service 31-07-2010 by londonstuff


The eagle eyed will notice from the video that the doors have buttons. These were disabled on other Tube trains a number of years ago. The driver will have control of the doors, but will close them if the train has to stay on the platform for any length of time, keeping the cool or warm air in. So if that happens new passengers will need to press the button to re-open the door.

More about the air conditioned trains can be found on TfL's website and if you want to see the current one in action it will be running from Wembley Park to Watford from 2nd August. The roll-out on the Metropolitan Line will be complete by 2011. We'll start seeing them on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines from 2011. Then the District line will get the next lot in 2013 and all trains will be on the network from 2015.

Update - the point about door buttons had a number of us wondering why the door buttons were disabled. So I asked TfL who said "LU removed passenger door activation across all lines in 1998 to speed up station dwelling times, as the Underground was getting busier. The new S-Stock doors are opened by the driver but after 45 seconds they close to keep cooled air in during summer, or warm air in during winter. The door can be reopened by pressing the in-carriage button, but ultimately the driver has complete control of the doors and can override them."

One Under - Channel 4 Documentary

We've probably all stood at London Underground platforms and heard about delays due to "a person under a train". Most of us don't think too much about them, apart from an irritation about being late, or wondering why the person couldn't have chosen another time or line.


On Friday Channel 4 screened a 30 minute film by Lucy Bennett - called One Under. It looks at Tube drivers who give first-hand accounts of their experiences with the suicides. The interviews are moving and give an insight into the initial shock, anger, attempts at understanding, appearance at Coroner's Court, right through to the permanent marks the suicide left on their lives.

It's certainly a powerful contrast to the comedy film about one-unders - Three & Out - which led to demonstrations by train union ASLEF.

In One Under, you also hear from the widow of man who took his life by jumping under a train and how she tried to make sense of the events. "John no longer has the pain he was dealing with, but so many other people do", she said.

The film can be watched online for the next month on 4OD.

Tube Seat Etiquette

Well placed spoof sticker spotted by Version-3-point-1 on priority seating:


Last week, I offered my seat to a woman who was clearly pregnant. As well as saying thank you, she also loudly said "Isn't it funny how it's always women who offer up their seats". I imagine it was to shame the many other seated men who hadn't offered their seats & I muttered a rather embarrassed "Spose so".

A few stops further down the line the seat behind me became free. I was about to move myself into it, when a man, who seemed to fall into the "drunks less able to stand" category, plopped himself into the seat.

In London Underground seat chasing selfishness, this took the biscuit. Both me & pregnant lady gave him hard Paddington stares. His seated mate (who had ignored the pregnant woman earlier), said "Oi give that seat up, there's ladies standing". Thinking I was about to get a seat back, another woman behind me leapt at the opportunity & grabbed the seat when he got up.

Leaning against the pole in the middle of the carriage, I then had drunk man, closely behind me, reading The Standard, over my shoulder. I was in the middle of a crossword puzzle and have never been more tempted to write the words "IDIOT", "BUFFOON" and much ruder words on my paper for him to see.

I really felt like I'd been the victim of bad Tube Seat Etiquette. Ignoring the fact that I'd given up my seat in the first place - isn't there an unspoken rule that people who're on the train before you get first dibs at empty seats? Should the woman behind me, have said "No you first"? Shouldn't drunken seated mate have also got up and offered us both seats - rather than chastising his mate for sitting? Am I being super sensitive over this?

Tube Daydreaming turned into art

We all day dream on the London Underground. There's plenty of time when you're paper-less, book-less or iPod-less to stare into space. So, now Art on the Underground have commissiond Daria Martin to produce some artworks based on the simple question "What have you been daydreaming about on the Tube?"


Tube people 4 by Ben Hammersley
"Travelling underground, or spending any length of time there, is not a natural human inclination. Martin wanted to find out to what extent people travelling on the Tube use self imposed psychological tricks on themselves as a distraction from the reality of being under the ground. It seems that one thing people do is to mentally transport themselves elsewhere, into the realms of fantasy." said Art on the Underground.

Freud would probably have a field day with what goes on in people's minds when underground, so it's fitting that Martin has taken objects from his desk - whilst visiting the Freud museum - and combined them with the day dream responses to make posters. These will be on display across the Tube network from mid-August onwards.

"Daria Martin's daydream survey is an attempt to present these fleeting images 'en masse' as a way of revealing surprising, or critical, aspects of the way we live our city based lives and how we deal with everyday situations."

Some of the daydreams reported by travellers on the Jubilee line are represented here. You're invited to add yours to the collection or just see what's behind those "blank looks" on the Tube.

Roundels not on the London Underground

The collection of Tube roundels not in their normal home continues to grow, as you've been kindly spotting them on your travels both in the UK and abroad.

Starting in Manchester and spotted by Richard & John


"It's the Grand Central complex in Stockport, Greater Manchester. It's a grotty, whiffy sort of low-intensity leisure & business area, and is supposed to be due for demolition so they can replace it with something even worse, but we love the roundel. The top semicircle has a representation of the railway viaduct over the River Mersey, and underneath is a bowling ball and wavy lines for the bowling alley and HIDEOUS swimming pool."

Then on their travels further afield:


Richard writes "This one's in Mallorca, about one-third of the way between Palma and Soller, on the railway. I haven't a clue what goes on in there, our train didn't stop there, but it was great to be surprised by a roundel while abroad!"

One much closer to home from Mark: "This one must have been around for a while 'cos I passed it yesterday but being without camera found it on Google StreetView. It says 'Finchley & Totteridge'."



Moving further afield Anno Superstar spotted the roundel in a record shop in Stockholm

Finally, thanks to Rebecca Caroe for spotting this in Dunedin New Zealand


Many thanks to all for being so observant and if you have any pictures of roundels seen in odd places outside of the London Underground, please send them my way and I'll blog the best. Until next time the full collection of Tube roundels outside their home is here.