95. Turnpike Lane

Saturday 8th August 11.50am

This is another 1930s station, built, along with the remaining stations to the end of the line, at the time of an extension to the Piccadilly line, and while I can see that the curvier ones are beautiful this big box of a place made me go "wow!". It's a big cube, partly submerged, so the ticket office area is huge and open - the ceiling and most of the walls aren't cluttered with stuff so it's quite plain but all the more impressive for it. I wish I'd taken pictures, but I'm still shy about being the man taking pictures of Tube stations.

There's a pair of short escalators to the platforms which has up-lighters between them, which you occasionally see elsewhere but not often, and at the bottom of the escalators there's two more up-lighters. It's really quite beautiful and I need to go back and take some pictures.

Wikipedia entry here.

94. Wood Green

Saturday 8th August 11.40am

Before I went here I had no idea where Wood Green is - if pushed I might have thought it was at the end of the Central Line in Essex, or confused it with Wood Lane in West London. Turns out it's near Alexandra Palace in that bit of London that I would probably think of as Hertfordshire (but clearly I'd be wrong).

It's one of those 1930s stations that has maintained pretty much all of its original features and character, like this rather beautiful sign on the platform:

And this air vent:

The ticket office is nicely curved as it's on a corner site, and it looks great from the outside too although it's slightly overshadowed by all the other stuff around it now - I imagined it looked quite striking when it was first built. It's a pity it's on a crossroads and is difficult to photograph from the outside.

Wikipedia entry here.

93. Chalk Farm

Friday 17th July 6.20pm

I've actually been through this station a couple of times but not since I started counting. I always find it a bit weird how you go down a short flight of stair to the bit where you get the lift from - it's a long station so I wonder why there wasn't room to put them on the same level?

There's some nice green tiling around the ticket hall and down on the platform the name is spelt out in tiles, which is always nice to see:

Wikipedia entry here.

92. Belsize Park

Friday 17th July 6.00pm

I was going to save this until I happened to be at a gig at the Roundhouse but that's looking increasingly unlikely, and as I had time to tick off a couple of stations near King's Cross I figured I might as well just do it anyway.

I'd been intrigued by it since I read a novel about a murder that takes places on the stairs of the station. It even included a map:

I promised myself when I went I'd look and see if it was the same, but of course as I got off the train I couldn't remember, although looking at it now I realise it's unchanged. I wish I'd arrived at the station on foot so I could have taken the steps to platform level, but there are 219 of them so there was no way I was doing it the other way round!

And the station? Oh it was your usual Northern line station of that period - low building covered in those lovely ox-blood red tiles, tiled platforms. What surprised me was how busy it was - I expected very few people to get off but tons did.

Wikipedia entry here.

91. Marble Arch

Saturday 4th July 3.50pm

I wanted this station to be grander. Despite being at the tale end of Oxford Street, the tattier end, it is obviously near Marble Arch which is of course a great big arch and I somehow thought it might reflect that. But no - its got a tiny entrance next to a Bureau de Change and near a MacDonalds. It -couldn't be less glamorous.

Down on the platform bits of the walls are clad with metal rather than tiles onto which are painted representations of arches. They look dated and cluttered, but as they were fitted in the 80s they're now thirty years old and have acquired value through age and survived a recent refit, which is a pity.

Wikipedia entry here.

90. Queensway

Saturday 4th July 12.10pm

There's something very familiar about this although I've never been to it before, mostly I think because it has lifts and is opposite a park so just reminds me of Lancaster Gate, which is the next station to it on the Central Line. There are lifts to the street level, but even when you get out of the lift there's an odd maze like passage to follow to get to the ticket office which makes no sense at all.

Wikipedia entry here.

89. Canary Wharf

Saturday 6th June 9.50am

I've actually been here before, two years ago, but drunkenly deleted the picture so couldn't count it. This time I actually had a legitimate reason to be here rather than just making up a reason, and thankfully it was on a Saturday morning when this part of the city is deserted because nobody works round there at the weekends.

It's one of those stations that makes everyone go "wow!" although I have to admit that as I left it, heading up the escalator I felt a bit underwhelmed by it. Yes it's big, but I can't help thinking that since it was built a lot of other big stuff has been built in London and somehow this doesn't impress as much as it did. Like the new Crossrail station which they've built round the corner, which I was there to visit and which has its own roof garden. Now that's a proper "wow!"

Wikipedia entry here.