🔦 Inside the tunnels, underground adventure and design bits
From now on, everytime I look out through the window from the top deck of the #49 bus in the morning, I would see more than just people crossing the streets from all directions, and rushing into the South Kensington tube station, but knowing that disued tube tation at Down Street is now almost empty, almost silent and almost secretive along with all the other abandoned stations were once full of life.
I just picked up this book called Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life, by Brandon LaBelle, and decided to read some on my way to the adventure, especially “underground” is the theme for the first chapter in his book.
Arrived at the the St. James Park station 55 Broadway, I stepped into the London Underground Head Office building, the building designed by Charles Holden and was once the tallest office building in London. Though there is so many more taller skyscrapers, the view from the top roof is still beautiful. And we are lucky to go beyond the 10th floor, and get a beautiful view at the rooftop! You can see the streets clear from above, and other landmarks not far either.
The humourous Senior Planner, David Leboff at TFL also gave us a little talk on the history and design of the London Underground. Below are the few things really caught my attention.
* image above is from the Johnston Wikipedia page
This is the man behind the iconic typeface of London Underground. The dimond shaped title (the dot on the letter i ) you cannot ignore. The typeface is commissioned by Frank Pick in 1913 (which is different from the wikipedia page, though I believe the wired article on the typeface’s 100 anniversary by Dan Rhatigan from Monotype is more credible.) Comparing to the New York metro typeface, Helvetica. I am “sorry” to say, London Underground’s Johnston have my heart. Oh, I am definitely not the first one thought to compare the tube to the famous nyc metro either, Guardian, Timeout, and the Huffingtonpost also did some writings on this nyc metro vs london tube thing ;)
*London Underground map in 1908 on the Tube Map on Wikipedia page
Metro map now in use does not represent the true geo-locations of each station, but rather designed to be legible for the users. The colours for each line have changed overtime as well.
The passing of a train at a given point on each underground railway causes a stroke to be marked on the dial of the clock. These strokes therefore indicate the number of trains run in each hour.
More images of the building interiors.
I am very curious on the train interval clocks. I wonder how they are being studied by the specialist. First thing came to my mind is the data are visualized on the circular sheets, and if the specialist have some way of clearing, analyzing the data that were collected. (I sent out an email to David, and hope to get some insights…)
Some more visuals
As mentioned at the very beginning, Down Street Station is almost secretive…as we are only allowed to take photos ar certain points during our visit, I found videos on youtube that might give you some visuals.
Down into the tube, we were mostly using the torch on the smart phones, and following David’s lead to the deep dark. At one time, we all turned off our torch, and it was p-i-t-c-h dark!
Creepy naughty fun: as the trains went through the disused tunnels, David asked us to turn off the torch and watch the people on the train who were not able to see us! Any horror movies appear in your mind? Wonder if you were on the train while we were watching from the dark?
The place was used as shelters and work spaces during WWII. David showed us old photo documentations on some spaces, how they were converted to living spaces at that time, some facilities remained in the spaces, including basins and bathtubs. After the tour, we climbed up to the ground and stood in the late afternoon sreet, the streets above the ground seems so quiet, comparing to the silent underground.
If you want to know more about the abandoned stations, here is a good source.
