99. Clapham South

Thursday 15th October 5.45pm

Another one of those roundels with the wooden edging the looks like my Dad might have made it! At some point I'm going to have to buy some wood and prove my point. I wish someone could explain who this is came about.

This has got quite an impressive entrance that fronts onto a busy street but which leaves you in no doubt as to what it is, with the great big roundel on the building itself. I wish there were more like that.

Wikipedia entry here.

98. Clapham Common

Thursday 15th October 3.50pm

This is another of those station with a very narrow island platform between the tracks (Clapham North is the same), which explains the wonky angle of the picture - anything else would involve getting dangerously close to the track and I'm not that stupid. Above ground the station has a nice dome over the small entrance, which makes it look grander than it actually is.

Wikipedia entry here.

97. Balham

Thursday 15th October 3.40pm

Shamefully I didn't pay much attention to the station as I was with a friend and we were chattering away as we headed down to the platform level - possibly down just a short escalator with those big metal up-lighters that some stations have, which I really like - and the train was already on the platform so I snapped the picture and got on the train just as the door-closing beeps started, much to the relief of my friend.

Wikipedia entry here.

96. Finsbury Park

Saturday 8th August 11.55am

I did the stations either side of this early in the year but avoided this one as the memory of the Christmas overcrowding fiasco was still fresh in my mind, which left this rather out on a limb so it was nice to have a legitimate reason to be there. It turns out to be one of those stations that's too big to love - as well as the Tube there's the Overground and National rail trains, and there's a bush station nearby as well - you can't serve all those people with any charm, and it doesn't. The front entrance looks modern and impressive so inevitably I left by a side entrance which was less crowded and older.

Wikipedia entry here.

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.