58. Mansion House

Saturday 20th September 11.45am

This is one of those stations in a part of the city that seems a bit overrun with stations, but I guess those business types don't like to walk too far to the office. The beauty of those business stations is that they're absolutely deserted at weekends and I was the only person on the platform waiting for the train. The platform had lots of pillars along it which would have been great for a game of hide-and-seek.

It's also got one of those labyrinth artworks. I've not really understood or being paying attention to them. Apparently there's on at every station and people are collecting the whole set. If only I'd known about them when I started this nonsense I might have done the same, but I'm not going back to the beginning now!

Wikipedia entry here.

57. Westminster

Saturday 20th September 11.00am

I do like these roundels that stand up on their own, it's nice to see them in three dimensions, and I guess there's no other way of doing it with all the glass (although I did see one in Hammersmith which was on the glass, but I forgot to photograph it).

So this is one of those stations on the fancy Jubilee line, all concrete, steel and glass. But I was coming into it on the District line and I didn't know if there was still some remnants of an old station for that line. But no, the whole this has been rebuilt although you don't get the scale of it from this line, just coming up one flight of stairs to the ticket hall and out onto the street. Rather disappointingly there isn't a big bold building above ground, just lots of entrances that give you no idea of what lies beneath.

Wikipedia entry here.

56. West Brompton

Saturday 20th September 10.45am

This was another of those next-stop-from-where-I-needed-to-be stations and turned out to be quite informative as well - I'd have expected it to be a bit further north than it was, a bit nearer Kensington, a bit posher perhaps. And I wasn't expecting Chelsea football club to be just round the corner either. I was also surprised to see the Earls Court Exhibition Centre just over the road - when I went there two years ago it was chaos on the trains at Earls Court afterwards, which it turns out could have easily been avoided by taking a side exit from the building and using this station instead. I'd remember that for another time but they're probably going to knock down the centre so that knowledge is a bit too late.

The station shares platforms with the Overground and they're all open air, which gives it something of a country feel, which is a bit unexpected in the heart of the city.

Wikipedia entry here.

55. Borough

Friday 12th September 1.15pm

The main thing to note about this station is that it isn't as close to Borough Market as its name would suggest - that's right next door to London Bridge, in fact the track runs over the top of it - but I've already been there and actually don't like it so I gave it a miss. 

It's also on the trickier half of the Northern Line, the Bank branch which comes through King's Cross but actually is no use to me as it doesn't go anywhere I want to go. There's talk of splitting the Northern Line in two at some point when it gets extended south to Battersea, but it seems like it will be fairly cosmetic and won't make any difference to the way you actually use the line.

Wikipedia entry here.

54. Hyde Park Corner

Friday September 12th 11.30am

This is one of those stations with no surface buildings, that you get to through a slightly confusing subway under the busy junction at Hyde Park Corner. Once you get into it the station itself the platforms still have some of the old tiling, which is always lovely to see:

There was also some rather lovely tiling on the other platform too, but I only noticed that as the train pulled away and I was too slow to get my phone out to take a picture.

Wikipedia entry here.

So, 54 stations, that's 20% of them done then. Not bad going for 21 months, especially as I don't live in London and haven't really gone out of my way to visit stations that I wasn't near anyway. It has made me realise though just how hard this task is going to be to complete - I'm going to have no reason to be at the ends of the Central line other than to visit the stations, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. In the meantime I had to address the problem of how to keep track of where I've been. Yes I realise that's what this is for, but I also needed something more practical, that I could hold in my hand so I could see what I needed to do next. Basically what I needed was an A3 copy of the Tube map and a highlighting pen:

53. Earls Court

Friday 12th September 9.15am

The outside of this is rather lovely, with the name of the railway company across the top of the front of the older part of the station, but there was roadworks going on which made it tricky to photograph. There was also an old-fashioned police box outside the front which is how this picture came about:

Inside it's rather lovely - you walk up some stairs to a sort of mezzanine level which looks over the track, down the station and in the distance you can see the Earl's Court concert hall/exhibition centre through the end of the platform. Stupidly I didn't get a picture of it, which is a shame as there's a lot of talk of knocking that building down. Apparently there's a much more modern station building at that end, but I've only used it once and didn't notice as it was so crowded.

The Piccadilly line platforms are only accessible by lifts and they're your standard tiled platform, just as you'd expect to find on this part of the line.

Wikipedia entry here.

52. Gloucester Road

Friday 11th September 6.30pm.

My first Tube picture with an actual train in it, thanks to the island platform arrangement rather than separate platforms in separate tunnels.

This is probably a more interesting station than you realise as you walk through it, especially as you leave the building which is dwarfed somewhat by an ugly arcade with a Waitrose in it.

Wikipedia entry here

51. Mornington Crescent

Saturday 6th September 6.15pm

This station is most famous for the fact that it was closed for years. I remember staying with a friend who was house-sitting in Camden in the 90s and having to walk past it to the busier Camden Town tube as it was shut and nobody seemed to know if it would ever open again. It's also the name of some game on radio 4 but I've never heard of it as those comedy things often aren't as funny as I'd hope.

The station itself is fairly classic: tiled platform, oxblood red tiled building above ground. It does have lifts instead of stairs (the cause of the endless closure) and as I waited for one I enjoyed eavesdropping on two women, one of whom was talking about someone she'd been dating for two months before the whole thing fizzled out. It's actually a very civilised way of arriving in Camden as it's on a quiet street and there's a nice walk up Camden High Street before it gets really busier, and surely anywhere is preferable to the horror of Camden Town tube?

Wikipedia entry here.

50. Bayswater

Saturday 6th September 6pm

I had no reason to be at this station other than to tick it off my list - I walked from Paddington to get there! I assumed it would be in a residential area, not really being familiar with Bayswater, but it's on a street full of shops and restaurants and as soon as I turned onto it I remembered I'd been there before.

The station building is one of those single storey ones that they probably hoped someone would build offices on top of but it never happened. Down on the platform it's more of that lovely brickwork that this part of the line is made up of and at the end of platform it's open so you can see how it was made and also just how close to the surface it is, which is rather beautiful.

Wikipedia entry here.

49. Paddington

Saturday 6th September 10.45am

This is my second go at this station - the last time I was there they were building on the platforms or something and it was too crowded to stop and take a picture, and of course if there's no picture it doesn't count. I recently saw a show at the Edinburgh Fringe by the man who currently holds the world record for getting round the whole Tube network in the quickest time and he seemed to suggest that Paddington was two separate stations, which confuses me as it's only shown as one on the map and all the lines seem interconnected even if there are a confusing amounts of entrances, including one outside the station on the other side of the road. But it's the same at King's Cross and that only counts as one. So I might be back here from another line, or I might not, who knows!

It is a bit of charmless maze of tunnels which is a pity as the mainline station above it has got quite a lot of character if you look hard enough, I have a fondness for it which it probably doesn't deserve as I associate it with a friend from Wales, and also Paddington Bear (yes I know that's the mainline station but they are inextricably linked).

Wikipedia entry here.

48. Marylebone

Saturday 6th September 10.30am

This is one of those stations that I forget exists and would find hard to place on a map, if pushed probably thinking it was a bit further round near Shepherd's Bush. I've never been as it's not near anywhere I've needed to go and the mainline station it's attached to doesn't go places I would need to go either. Like most of the Tube stations attached to mainline stations it's a bit of a horror, with too many people millinground not knowing where to go, but thankfully as it only serves one line it's easy to get round. It's probably a lot more interesting and historic than you get a sense of when you're in it.

Wikipedia entry here.

47. Baker Street

Saturday 6th September 10.10am

I have bad memories of this station from my early twenties, changing here from a Tube from Wembley and trying to find the platform to get back to King's Cross after gigs in Wembley Arena. The layout of the station doesn't help - too many lines on too many levels, and I just remember frantically running through it and crossing my fingers I was about to jump on the right train. Thankfully yesterday I wasn't changing so a repeat of that was avoided, although it does seem overly complicated to get out of.

I was on another of those lovely old brick platforms that really do give you a sense of how the Tube looked when it was first built, but it does mean I didn't get to take a picture of the tiles with the head of Sherlock Holmes on them that some of the other platforms have. But I did hum Gerry Rafferty's song of the same name to myself, even though it's about the street more than the station.

Wikipedia entry here.

46. Great Portland Street

Saturday 6th September 10.00am

Another station on that section of Euston Road near to Euston station which has more stations than is strictly necessary. I have a fondness for this one as I once went on a date in Regents Park and we bought a picnic from the Pret a Manger that is part of the station, but until yesterday I'd never been in it. It's a nice building - what's that shape called when it's a square with a semi-circle on either end? Well it's that, on a roundabout in a load of traffic, and although the shops that form part of the building are nothing glamorous I still rather like it.

Down on the platform it's all brick and arches, like the other stations on this section of the Tube, which makes me think it's one of those cut-and-cover ones from before they invented methods of tunnelling. I like the fact that the roundel I took a picture of was a bit dirty and not all new and shiny.

Wikipedia entry here.