148. Shepherd's Bush

Saturday 22nd October 10.00am

Surely everyone knows that when you lay tiles (and indeed brickwork) you should stagger the tiles to avoid the cross-shaped joint you can see above and below the name. Shocking workmanship.

The station was rebuilt in 2008, at the same time as the enormous Westfield shopping centre was opened beside it. It would be hard to find a more vapid building - it's literally a glass box over the top of the escalators, down to corridors and platforms that seem unchanged (apart from the bad tiling).

Wikipedia entry here.

147. Latimer Road

Saturday 22nd October 9.40am

I like the painted boards the roundel is mounted on.

This is one of those stations that is peculiar to this part of west London where the track is actually elevated so the entrance is at ground level with a small ticket hall and stairs up to rather windswept platforms. These are becoming a personal favourite, despite the fact that they're the very antithesis of the undergound!

Wikipedia entry here.

That was the final station I needed to visit to tick off every single station on the Circle line. Sooner or later I was going to complete a whole line but I'm surprised to find it was the Circle first, because although it's central it's not that central - it goes round the centre, not through it, and when do I ever need to be around Shepherd's Bush! I was fully expecting to complete the Victoria line first as it's the shortest, but the stations at the northern end of it are proving elusive. Must try harder.

146. Newbury Park

Saturday 22nd October 8.30am

This station has got a grade II listed bus shelter in front of it - a concrete arch with a copper roof which looks amazing in pictures. But the reality doesn't have dramatic lighting or filters, and is filled with people hanging around waiting for buses. It's also a bit smaller than the pictures suggest, so try as I might I couldn't even get a rubbish picture of it. Instead I got a picture of a big roundel on a pole outside the station:

Wikipedia entry here.

145. Finchley Road

Wednesday 12th October 3.45pm

This is another one of those stations on a corner in a parade of shops so you don't notice anything about the building as you stumble across it and get sucked down into it.

Wikipedia entry here.

144. West Hampstead

Wednesday 12th October 3.30pm

What I liked most about this station was the waiting room with curved windows, which were also ridiculously clean:

Wikipedia entry here.

143. Canning Town

Wednesday 12th October 12.25pm

I like the way the roundel has been given a mohican to scare away the pigeons. It wasn't just this sign - it was all of them. I've not seen that anywhere else before, and there are plenty of other outdoor stations, so I guess this one is unusually popular with pigeons.

The station is very long and thing, squeezed in beside a main road and under a flyover, it's really just a long glass box. But sadly it's not as glamorous as that sounds.

Wikipedia entry here.

142. West Ham

Wednesday 12th October 12.05pm

It's nice to see some good honest brickwork on a modern station instead of concrete and steel, and it's all the more surprising as this is a Jubilee line station and the whole line is quite literally built of concrete and steel. There's the familiar large open spaces inside the building too, and I was so busy enjoying them that I completely missed the exit.

Wikipedia entry here.

141. Southgate

Saturday 1st October 6.05pm

There are some brilliant pictures of this station lit up at night looking like a spaceship and that's how I wanted to see it, but as my 'rules' more of less dictate me arriving or departing on foot, which would mean stumbling around suburbia in the dark, I've avoided it. I just remember getting lost after leaving Kennington station late one evening and that's enough to put me off.

It looks less impressive in the daylight as it's on a roundabout and therefore surrounded by cars:

It is another lovely circular building though:

And I've not seen anything like this before:

The escalators down to the platform have some lovely up-lighters between them but it was too busy to get a good picture of them.

It was nice to see some old signage on the platform:

Wikipedia entry here.

140. Oakwood

Saturday 1st October 5.40pm

This end of the Piccadilly line has been high on my list to visit as there's some very interesting stations here, and as it's not far from King's Cross (my 'home' station) it really ought not to have taken so long. I got there in the end.

The station building itself is a huge box, although as always they're hard to photograph than books and the internet suggest, partly because I'm focused on my onward journey and forget. So here's a view of the station from the platform:

And here are two views from inside which give a better idea of the scale of it:

I imagine that when there's nobody there and the building is flooded with light that it's really quite beautiful.

It was also my first station in zone 5, which I'll obviously be spending a lot more time in as this challenge continues.

Wikipedia entry here.

139. Fulham Broadway

Saturday 24th September 4.40pm

This is one of my least favourite types of station - you have to go through a shopping centre to get to it! It's been modernised and part of the platform was new concrete into which the roundels were recessed, which I've not seen anywhere else before, but I didn't get a picture of them as that part of the platform was taken up by a man and a woman arguing with policemen.

Wikipedia entry here.

138. West Kensington

Saturday 24th September 4.15pm

Another station build on a bridge that straddles the tracks with stairs down either side. A small and fairly simple station as only one line goes through it. The building itself is one of those nice pale stone - Portland? - ones, although it's hard to get a decent view of it from across a busy road.

Wikipedia entry here.

137. Turnham Green

Saturday 24th September 4.00pm

My first trips to London after leaving school were to visit friends who were at college in West London. We had to pass into this station on our way into the city, and without fail someone would exclaim, "Turnham Green with envy!" We though we were funny. We weren't.

This is one of those stations where the track is elevated so the entrance and ticket office are at ground level and you have to go upstairs to catch the train. It feels the complete wrong way round for the underground but it does mean you get a great view down the tracks and over the green itself.

Wikipedia entry here.

136. Chiswick Park

Saturday 24th September 3.45pm

This is one of those stations that Piccadilly line trains go through but don't stop, which is confusing if you just look at a Tube map quickly and aren't paying proper attention.

The building is rather brilliantly circular, to suit its position on the bend in a road:

Rubbish picture but you get the idea. We don't really do many circular buildings in this country, although there are a surprising amount of circular Tube stations.

Wikipedia entry here.

135. North Ealing

Saturday 24th September 3.20pm

This is one of those stations on bits of track that existed before the Underground, which is why the station doesn't look more modern, and it fact looks a bit like a house that has been adapted into a station:

There's a bridge over the tracks, and as I crossed it a train - not one I needed - pulled into the station:

Wikipedia entry here.

135 stations is exactly halfway through this task. If I'd thought more carefully about it perhaps I'd have made the 135th somewhere historic and significant, but I guess it's more appropriate that it's an every day suburban station. Here's what my map looks like now:

134. Ealing Broadway

Saturday 24th September 3.00pm

This is the western end of the District line, but it's also a National Rail station. It has a confusing amount of exits, or just bad signage, which meant that I ended up swiping my Oyster card in two different places before I left the station, which makes me look like a complete beginner. To add insult to injury it then throws you out into a busy shopping street, which is confusing when you have no idea where you're going.

Wikipedia entry here.

133. Ealing Common

Saturday 24th September 2.50pm

This is one of those stations whose ticket office is built on a bridge over the tracks with stairs going down either side to the platform. An entirely practical if slightly unmemorable arrangement.

Wikipedia entry here.

132. Acton Town

Saturday 24th September 11.00am.

This is one of those stations that has nothing interesting going on at platform level because all the good stuff is on top - above the ticket office is a huge box with loads of windows in it so on a sunny autumn day it was flooded with light in quite a beautiful way.

Wikipedia entry here.

131. Kensington (Olympia)

Saturday 24th September 10.30am

Yes I know that's an Overground roundel but no matter how hard I looked I couldn't find an Underground one, so I assumed there isn't one, only some smart-arse put one on Wikipedia which means I'm going to have to go back for another look. Damn. It was hard enough getting to this station in the first place - Tube trains only go to it when there's something on at Olympia, which isn't very often. Aren't they planning to knock down Olympia? Or am I muddling it with Earls Court? Anyway, the station building is tiny - barely big enough to house the barriers - but there's an awful lot of platform. It feels a bit windswept.

Wikipedia entry here.

130. Holland Park

Saturday 24th September 10.10am

This has been shut for a while for refurbishment otherwise I might have visited sooner. Quite what the refurbishment was is hard to tell, although the bit of the tunnel facing the platform does have some bare plaster on it. I expect it was lifts, because it's always lifts if it's not escalators (and this has no escalators). It does have some nice old signage in it though:

The station itself is small and quiet, and is situated in possibly the fanciest row of shops I've seen, including a champagne shop. It's very posh round there.

Wikipedia entry here.

129. Hammersmith

Tuesday 23rd August 6.30pm

Hammersmith has frustrated me - I've been through it twice since I started doing this and both times forgot to take pictures. In my defence I was on my way to gigs - Kate Bush, John Grant - so I had other things on my mind. But that doesn't stop me disliking this station, because you have to leave it through a shopping centre which is just about the most stupid idea ever! Except it turns out you don't have to - when I came out of it this time it was just a very short walk before I found myself in front of a statue of three naked men. As you do. Then on the return journey I was straight through the barriers and onto a train. But that was using different lines, which confuses me further - the District and Piccadilly lines come out through the shopping centre, the Hammersmith & City line is across the road in an older, more civilised building. There's no below ground connection between them - you have to go outside and cross the road, which to my mind makes them two separate stations, just like Edgware Road, but on the map they only count as one. It's mystifying. Which is a shame as there are a lot of reasons to like Hammersmith itself.

Wikipedia entry here and here - see, they think it's two stations as well!

128. Osterley

Tuesday 23rd August 1.25pm

I don't know if the blue bit across the middle of the roundel is wider than usual, or if the number of letters just makes it look like that, but there's something big and bold about that.

The station itself was once modern but now looks run down as you'd expect from something right next door to the A4. There's a tower which probably serves no purposes - there doesn't seem to be a lift - with an odd thing on top of it, but it didn't wow me enough to take a picture of it.

Wikipedia entry here.

127. Kensal Green

Thursday2nd June 3.30pm

This station would have been easier to find if I hadn't been muddling it up with Kensal Rise, which isn't even a Tube station. It was easy to miss - the station building is tiny, perched on top of a bridge over the rail tracks, and because it's also an Overground station it doesn't even have a Tube sign outside. As I walked down to the platform I got a bit panicky that there might not be a roundel but thankfully there was. Interestingly I didn't even care that the train was cancelled.

I like the way the new Mayor of London sneaked into the picture too.

Wikipedia entry here.

126. Queen's Park

Thursday 2nd June 3.15pm

I'd heard of the football team that take their name from the area but if you'd asked me to find it on a map I'd be clueless. Turns out it in north-west London!

The odd thing about the platform was that all the roundels were small and above head height, which explains the slightly weird picture. There might have been platform sharing going on, or perhaps someone just went mad when they put them up? The station itself is so unremarkable I remember nothing about it!

Wikipedia entry here.

125. Bounds Green

Saturday 21st May 6.15pm

This is one of those stations that's built into a row of shops and on a corner, so you don't notice it until you're right on top of it, and then forget to step back and take a look at what it looks like on the outside.

It's got a nice pair of escalators in a curved tunnel going down to the platforms, and as it was really quiet, and I was confused about which platform I wanted, I managed to take a picture of it:

Wikipedia entry here.

124. Arnos Grove

Saturday 21st May 5.50pm

I like that picture because it's not often I've taken one with a train in it, let alone one that's moving.

I knew of the area this station is in as it gets a mention in a song by Saint Etienne, which makes me think it has a faded glamour about it but the reality is a residential area on the North Circular of which the Tube station is a high point. It's on the extension to the Picadilly line, which is where things got architecturally more interesting as they were less constricted by space than in the centre of the city, so the above ground part of this station is a huge, beautiful cylinder, although the pictures hardly do it justice:

Wikipedia entry here.

123. East Finchley

Saturday 2nd April 5.30pm

The most interesting of the Finchley stations, probably because it's near the shops and is a lot less suburban. It's got a bigger, more interesting, station building, and doesn't have a footbridge to the platforms - instead the line is elevated and there are passages and stairs underneath it with signs like this:

Wikipedia entry here.

122. Finchley Central

Saturday 2nd April 4.50pm

At this point I began to realise that there's a lot of Finchley and it's all quite similar, although I'm sure the locals wouldn't thank me for saying so.

Wikipedia entry here.

121. West Finchley

Saturday 2nd April 4.45pm

This is very similar to the last station although it seems to have a slightly more modern, smaller, station building. It also has a footbridge over the tracks and when I crossed it there were two trains in the station so I stopped to take a picture:

Which of course means I missed my train, but amazingly, considering this feels like the middle of nowhere, another train arrived two minutes later.

Wikipedia entry here.

120. Woodside Park

Saturday 2nd April 4.25pm

Now I'm getting to the bits of the underground that hardly seem like underground at all as I get towards the edge of the map. This station started like as a train station before it was brought into the network. With its above ground platforms and platform canopies edged with white board it doesn't look that dissimilar to the rail station at home. And out of the station itself it's very residential - you could be anywhere.

Oh and according to Wikipedia it's alphabetically last on the list of Tube stations. I've never thought to look at a list like that - I must find one.

Wikipedia entry here.