What is your favourite London Underground station?

[a duncandisorderly]

I wouldn't recommend it really. They do some cable car thing but there is NOTHING there. It is one of the weirdest places i've been to, this tiny island of total serenity dotted roght in the middle of one of the most energetic and busy places on earth.

exactly why it's a nice place to go.

Fuck no not a cable car, those things that go on a track up in the air. Its like a tourism thing

nope. at least, not in the summer of 1999.... I was alone going over, & with one person coming back.

my pilgrimage was partly 'leon' inspired, but mostly because the contraption is briefly visible in the video for "crosstown traffic" (C875151, fact fans), which, at 2'20, was the single most popular video amongst the transmission staff at Mtv, & was constantly being played when an hour was under-running, usually because I'd double-rolled summat else that I didn't like. for some reason, probably rights, the version of the audio on this clip is NOT what we played out from VH-1, but some jaunty remix. I quite like it.

https://youtu.be/-sPlw70ZSIM?t=13

[Ferris]

Goodge Street.

[Attila]

I like the staircase at Russell Square (and hate the scary lifts) but they keep telling people not to go up/down it except in emergencies. It's not that many steps. I presume they are worried about being sued.

Rusell Sq is my favourite because it's my 'home' station, and I have a lot of good associations with that station/area.

If I have no bags and I'm just headed out and about for the day, I always take the stairs down. Back in my misspent youth, I'd climb them on occasion, too.

Least fave -- Green Park changing to get to Victoria -- ugh, so crowded.

Tottenham Court Rd used to be another fave, associations again, but they've done horrible things to it and that whole area :(

[madhair60]

they all are horrible

[alan nagsworth]

That one where you have to mind the gap.

They all have to mind the gap by the time etc

I love Bayswater. It's got the big balcony right as you enter which overlooks both the District line platforms with a string of gorgeous tall potted plants along it, and the staircase leading down at either side of it. Belter.



Bank really is the fucking pits, deffo the worst. A labyrinthian cunting mess of dull , functionally lit space and sharp turns. You could cut yourself on how fucking awful that station is, so roughly hewn is the edge of convenient travel engineering. Literally the only nice bit is the weird little spiral stair set leading up to the Central line platforms. But then both of those platforms are train-hugging cylinders of hell fire chock to the brim with bellwipes who think they can stand back leaning on the wall of the platform right until the train doors open instead of getting up on the yellow line like the fucking CLOWNS they are.

[Norton Canes]

Uh dunno... sooo long since we were in London, used to know them all but not any more. What's that one where there's lots of tracks parallel to each other, just as they transfer from underground to overground (Wombling free), sort of on the cusp of the underground, lots of tracks, tunnels going everywhere... I keep having dreams about thay one, not sure it actually exists outside of my imagination though

[Norton Canes]

Hang on. HANG ON. I've just looked at the latest Tube map, to jog my memory, and... the Circle line, isn't even a fucking CIRCLE any more

[Norton Canes]

Appears it should now be called the SPIRAL line

[Cuellar]

Can I shock you?

Charing Cross

[greencalx]

Someone was asking about the site with the 3d tube station maps. It's here: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/07/12/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-ab/ (you have to click on the 1 pixel "preview" images to see them).

Bank was mentioned upthread

[Twed]

Someone was asking about the site with the 3d tube station maps. It's here: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/07/12/3d-maps-of-every-underground-station-ab/ (you have to click on the 1 pixel "preview" images to see them).

Bank was mentioned upthread

Really weird, like looking at tunnels in an ant farm.

[mothman]

I do like Finsbury Park, because that's where I used to live. Hounslow West, because great all-day parking. Newbury Park, just for the way it looks. Canary Wharf, too.

[Konki]

Upminster Bridge has a lovely big swastika on the floor.

[Darles Chickens]

Embankment is "mind the gap" isn't it, with the super curvy platform.  When I was last there, over 15 years ago now, it was one of the few remaining stations which still used the original recordings, demanding belligerently that you "MIND THE GAP"" and "STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS PLEASE".

I don't know why Cauty and Drummond featured it on "1987 What The Fuck's Going On", but I'm glad it's captured there for posterity.  There's something about the whole tone of this announcement that I love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv6iRjNjdBk

[flotemysost]

Embankment is "mind the gap" isn't it, with the super curvy platform.  When I was last there, over 15 years ago now, it was one of the few remaining stations which still used the original recordings, demanding belligerently that you "MIND THE GAP"" and "STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS PLEASE".

Haha yes, I was talking to someone about this the other day. 'MEYND... the GEP.' Just sounds so archaic and unnecessarily stern, cracks me up every time.


I quite enjoy Warwick Avenue for the fact that it's completely underground, even the ticket hall bit, but the twin entrances are pretty phwoaar:




Soft background classical music and a second-hand book exchange always go down well, and Oval smashes it on both fronts. Bonus points for the terrifying wizened Santa figure they roll out at Christmas (or used to anyway).


Agree that Bank is wank.


Finsbury Park does indeed reek of ripe sewage at the Seven Sisters Road exit, but I have fond memories of the area generally and it's also just really convenient.

[Ambient Sheep]

Embankment is "mind the gap" isn't it, with the super curvy platform.  When I was last there, over 15 years ago now, it was one of the few remaining stations which still used the original recordings, demanding belligerently that you "MIND THE GAP"" and "STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS PLEASE".

Haha yes, I was talking to someone about this the other day. 'MEYND... the GEP.' Just sounds so archaic and unnecessarily stern, cracks me up every time.

There's a very good and very sweet reason that Embankment station still uses the original recording...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21719848


Bank Central Line is also a "Mind the Gap" station too (the one I knew best), but yeah they changed that one over a long time ago.

That KLF recording is terribly nostalgic to me, as much for the sound of that era of tube train pulling in, as the announcement itself.

[Darles Chickens]

There's a very good and very sweet reason that Embankment station still uses the original recording...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21719848

I was reading more about the history of this recording last night, and found that there's a surprising dispute over whose voice it actually is, which isn't quite covered by that BBC news article.

Story goes that, in the 1960s, a sound engineer called Peter Lodge was contracted to produce the recording, and an actor called Oswald Laurence had been booked to say the two sentences, for a standard fee of £50.  The job was done, but later on, Lodge heard back from the actor's agent, who was demanding repeat fees.  Ruling this out straight away, they decided to re-record the announcements, and, on hearing Lodge's own recordings of the two sentences while performing sound checks, decided they were perfect and took them.

This is covered in more detail here, and it's very curious:

March 2013: Who's this Oswald Laurence, then?

Something funny is going on. Mark Mason's The Importance of Being Trivial ran an article about how the Peter Lodge announcement, which had been removed from Embankment platform, was now being revived at the request of his widow; a day or two later, the BBC ran a news article which clarified that the widow in question was that of one Oswald Laurence, but apparently containing the same recording that we know as the Peter Lodge recording.

There are further factors lending confusion to the mix. Mark Mason's article indicates that the Oswald Laurence recording incorporates the word please (after Mind The Gap, one would presume), yet that is not the recording his widow plays on the CD in the news-video. An article in the Daily Mail also notes that the Laurence recording said please, and the writers also contacted Graham Lodge; however the article disagrees with the BBC in suggesting that Mr Laurence died 12 years ago, as opposed to in 2007. Their exquisite editorial standards ensured that another article, very substantially different, appeared the following day and with some of the facts corrected.

I don't believe Peter Lodge and his son would have played someone else's recording all this time; equally, I wouldn't think the widowed Mrs McCollum would appear before the cameras and play someone else's husband's voice on a CD. But they can't both be right...whose voice is actually on this famous recording?

September 2013: The conundrum remains... but here is a plausible explanation

I have been in touch with a Communications Manager at LU who was responsible for the re-instatement of the recording at Embankment. The simple fact of the matter is that nobody really knows whose stentorian voice is on this wonderful old recording.

One very plausible hypothesis (in spite of a parenthetical denial in Andrew Martin's 2013 article, linked above) runs like this:

Oswald Laurence may indeed have been the actor, hired by the Scotsman from Telefunken, whose agent had sought in vain for repeat fees. As Laurence had done his work as agreed, one assumes he would still have been paid his £50 fee. But the agent, upon failing to secure repeat fees, might very understandably have chosen not to tell Oswald of this—leaving the actor none the wiser that the recording for which he was paid was never actually used.

In the subsequent re-recording which we know happened, Peter Lodge may well have intentionally mimicked the actor's voice: it was the intended result, after all.

A futher 23 years would elapse before Oswald Laurence met Margaret McCollum, by which time his unwitting misconception as to the identity of the voice on the public recording would be deeply seated.

In this way, two separate parties would each have "known" that it was their voice on the recording.

Ultimately, of course, we may never know.

[jobotic]

Went to Brixton recently for the first time in about twenty years. Liked all the shops underneath and the market was on.

[Sherringford Hovis]

Not an Underground station, but when I was seven or eight, I loved Liverpool Street.

The arrivals/departure board was still a glass-sided shed on stilts with men beavering away inside putting little name-planks, platform-planks and time-planks into slots. If we were catching a slow train, I could marvel at the scrap 1950s cars stored under the arches before the train got to Bethnal Green.

[Mister Six]

Haha yes, I was talking to someone about this the other day. 'MEYND... the GEP.' Just sounds so archaic and unnecessarily stern, cracks me up every time.

There's a very good and very sweet reason that Embankment station still uses the original recording...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21719848

Aw, that is truly lovely.

[Dex Sawash]

lovely/desolation

[Darles Chickens]

lovely/desolation

Particularly if it turns out that it wasn't actually her late husband's voice.

[José]

down the northern line, wherever it may take me. i know that life won't break me... when the tube arrives. it won't forsake me. i'm loving angel instead.

[José]

^sorry about that post, i've been under a lot of stress lately.

[Gurke and Hare]

Finsbury Park is a dump, but the quick change between the Piccadilly and Victoria lines is a wonderful thing.

The Churchill art at Leytonstone is great.

The worst is Stratford, weirdly integrated with a BR station.

[honeychile]

down the northern line, wherever it may take me. i know that life won't break me... when the tube arrives. it won't forsake me. i'm loving angel instead.

They've got a stop called the Angel
bet they named it after you
one called Wapping
that's the size of the love i got for you
well the Lambeth just lied down on Broadway
shove just came to push
oh baby you're looking good sweetheart from your Ruislips
right down to you Shepherd's Bush

We could be Canning and Ealing
Barking and Dorking
and getting down right personal
cos i like every stop on your body, baby
Arsenal

You're darn Tooting
i got no Shoreditch of love for you baby

Well i'm Turnham Green with envy
got a Belsize lump in my heart
i ain't Acton when i say that Morden ever
we should never be apart
so come on baby
take a Chancery Lane on this bloke
cos i'd Rotherhithe your love than anybody's
that's the Gospel Oak

We could be Canning and Ealing
Barking and Dorking
and getting down right personal
cos i like every stop on your body, baby
Arsenal

[mothman]

Finsbury Park is a dump, but the quick change between the Piccadilly and Victoria lines is a wonderful thing.

The Churchill art at Leytonstone is great.

The worst is Stratford, weirdly integrated with a BR station.

Stratford and Leyton were the ones I used most commonly when I moved to Forest Gate! Meeting at Stratford at the end of the day when we were completing very different journeys was often tricky to coordinate for me and my wife.

Having access at Finsbury Park to the Victoria AND Piccadilly Lines was just perfect for maintaining a social life in London. Just about everywhere I ever went was on those two lines.

[Pingers]

Went through Finsbury Park about an hour ago. Just as grimy and horrible as ever, but there was a Hospitality records thing on in the park and lots of people around with their tits half out. So, swings and roundabouts.