Tag Archives: Transport for London

Trains

I’m Not Sure Harry Beck Would Believe It…

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Screenshot 2014-01-25 19.55.54I’m not sure Harry Beck would believe it, but amongst the variations of his famous map of the London Underground that are now produced, this is a special version that shows the location of all the toilets on the system, including details of whether you have to pay, whether you have to find a member of staff who has the key, and even whether there are baby change facilities. It may seem a strange thing to have, but when you’re taking a little boy who doesn’t give you much notice of needing to go on his first trip to London, it’s an essential bit of kit!

Ever since he heard that there were trains that went underground, and trains without drivers, my son has wanted to see them, so since his sister was off at a party – seriously she has a busier social life than anybody else in our family – we headed off with Grandpa to go ride some trains.

We started off from the mythical Rickmansworth (Tom Phillips of Buzzfeed doesn’t seem to think the outer reaches of the Metropolitan line exist) and took the now rather slow train into London. Back in my youth the Met line from Rickmansworth ran down the other tracks from Moor Park and didn’t stop at Northwood, Northwood Hills, Pinner and North Harrow, today we saw the lot – it was only thanks to engineering work that we didn’t get Northwick Park and Preston Road too. This kept the interest for a bit, but we did get to the “are we there yet” by Harrow.

Things got more interesting beyond Wembley when we started overtaking the little trains on the Jubilee Line, and then at Finchley Road we crossed over and took a ride on one of those down into the depths of London. When we pulled into Swiss Cottage and we were still in a tunnel this was fascinating, although there was a definite concern as to whether the toilets were underground too, a fixation that continued all the way to St John’s Wood and beyond. Checking my toilet map I can see that whilst the toilets aren’t underground (or indeed anywhere) at Swiss Cottage, St John’s Wood even has baby change facilities.

We rode the Jubilee on under London, and there was another burst of interest when the platform doors appeared on the newer stretch. We jumped off when we got to Canary Wharf, and after much excitement at stairs that moved by themselves we headed onto the Docklands Light Railway for the even more exciting trains without any drivers.

Riding Up Front on the DLREven better, when we got onto the train, we got one where the seats right at the front were empty, so we could look at the track ahead.

Cue one transfixed little boy, especially when we got on the last stretch into Bank where the train is underground and there are lights along the tunnel so you can see where the train is going.

From there we headed along the Central Line to Bond Street, and picked up a bus where there was even more excitement about riding on the top deck, before ending up at Marylebone for a much faster journey back to Rickmansworth on the Chiltern Line – although much of that was missed as the excitement was all a bit too much and a nap was needed!

So we’ve now seen the trains that go underground, and the trains that have no drivers, and even had a go on a bus as well. I’ve also sampled the much maligned new trains on the Metropolitan line, which still bounce you all over the place when they run up to speed – methinks perhaps the track needs to be a bit flatter or something. I’m not sure any of them surpass Thomas and Friends for excitement, but for a first trip into London, there were certainly lots of excited descriptions for Mummy when we got home!

Church, CNMAC11

Christian New Media Conference

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This is the first in a series of posts about the Christian New Media conference and some issues raised by it.

Last Saturday I headed off to the Christian New Media conference in London. The conference was held at City University, which sits on leafy Northampton Square in Islington. Normally it’s pretty well connected transport wise with Angel tube a short walk to the north, and Farringdon and Barbican stations on the Circle slightly further south. However on Saturday, Transport for London had the Angel branch of the Northern Line closed totally, and services on parts of the Circle curtailed significantly along with a number of other closures effectively making any of my options for getting there pretty slow. In the end having found an NCP car park a short walk away, totted up the relative costs and time it actually worked out cheaper and quicker to drive!

For further reference traffic in the early morning on a Saturday is pretty light – I made it door to door coming in along the M4, round Shepherd’s Bush and along past Baker Street, Euston and Kings Cross in about an hour. Heading home was rather slower, but still not massively long compared to some people’s rail journeys!

City University was pretty nice once you got there – the main lecture theatre had clearly just been refurbished. Things were slightly chaotic since they hadn’t actually finished refurbishing in places giving a rather long hike to a toilet, and also because the university had classes going on elsewhere in the building with students mingling with the conference attendees. The organisation did seem to struggle to cope with the size of the conference at key times such as registration and the coffee breaks, and although many had prebooked lunch those prebookings weren’t enforced leaving frustration for some on collection. Having said that it was nothing like the chaos that the free for all at the Microsoft Developer Days produces.

The presenters were all good – there was only one technical hiccup once again demonstrating that you should never rely on a venue PC and should always bring your own computer. Bringing just a memory stick always ends in frustration. Having sat through many corporate and computer industry “death by PowerPoint” presentations it was also refreshing to have all the speakers use their slides to support what they were saying rather than just reading their slides to the audience. Indeed one presenter didn’t even use PowerPoint, instead going for Prezi – liable to induce motion sickness I suspect, but certainly makes a change.

The conference was also a chance to meet people I’d thus far only ‘met’ on Twitter. Needless to say I didn’t meet everyone, but then there is always next year!

All in all it was a good conference that gave me plenty to think about – more of which in subsequent posts. All of the issues are really growing pains as the conference, only in it’s second year, works out how to cope with the increasing interest in the topic.