182. Battersea Power Station

 

Monday 10th July, 11.45am

I hadn't planned to visit this, or it's neighbour Nine Elms, until I'd finished visiting all 270 Tube stations, just to keep it neat with percentages, but then I found myself visiting the area so I ticked it off anyway.

The station is very much like the new Jubilee line ones although somewhere along the way their individuality has been lost and it's just a bit plain and boring. In the space with the barriers and the entrances/exits there's artworks on opposite walls where things flip over to make a long horizontal panel change colour. Badly explained, better in reality. The bit of the exit above ground is unimpressive but then I guess it would be silly to try and compete with Battersea Power Station.

Wikipedia entry here.

181. Epping

Saturday 8th October, 12.58pm

The end of the line at the eastern end, which I probably wouldn't have visited so soon if their hadn't been a train strike - this is my nearest Tube station (74 miles, so not that near).

It's hard to see the station building itself as there's a roundabout directly in front of it, a drop off point, and a you have to go past it to get to the car park, so it doesn't really encourage loitering. There's a nice bridge over the tracks, and the platforms had flower beds so that's a nice touch. I wasn't expecting it to be so busy (although that might have been because of the train strike).

Wikipedia entry here.

180. Stonebridge Park

Friday 31st January 5.00pm

This has got the tiniest station building you could imagine, nestling beside the road with covered walkways to the platforms at higher level. The platforms are long, serving the Overground and national rail as well, with modern waiting rooms. But the platforms feel exposed, looking out over the surrounding areas, and I guess if it was light and you knew where to look you'd probably get a good view of Wembley stadium.

Wikipedia entry here.

179. Wembley Central

Friday 31st January 4.30pm

There are three stations serving Wembley and although it's a long time since I've been to the Arena (and I've never been to the stadium) I don't think this is one I've ever used. I may be confused as it seems to have been redeveloped and you come out of the front of the station into the middle of a sort of plaza with shops, restaurants and hotels all very nearby. It's all very modern, and busy which I guess is partly due to the station also serving the Overground and mainline train services. But it's not very memorable.

Wikipedia entry here.

178. Colindale

Wednesday 29th January 4.55pm

This sounds like it might be in Metroland but it's actually nearly at the end of the Northern Line, which somehow feels different - not so planned and speculative. The outside of it looks like it's been modernised recently, possibly in keeping with all the flats that are going up around it, which was a surprise as the walk to it is through the usual suburban streets with gardens concreted over to make room for cars and houses extended until bursting point. It doesn't seem like the kind of place that would have flats.

There's a very small ticket office with a newsagents in it then stairs down to the platform. All very familiar and practical. Nothing to suggest it was badly bombed in the war. Maybe that's something people don't like to be reminded of on their way to work.

Wikipedia entry here.

177. Burnt Oak

Wednesday January 29th 4.30pm

A fairly standard north London suburban station: island platform between the lines, stairs to the tickets hall. The ticket hall doesn't straddle the lines but is instead at right angles to the platform, which messed with my sense of direction when I left and sent me off in completely the wrong direction (as usual).

The ticket hall is a cube with some windows in the roof and a few panels of nice tiles, which might be grand if it was fancied up a bit. It was also too busy to stop in and take pictures of tiles without feeling like a madman.

Wikipedia entry here.

176. Willesden Junction

Saturday June 8th 10.35am

That sign makes me cross. This station has had Underground trains going through it since 1915 but there are no Underground red roundels on either of the Underground platforms, just orange Overground ones. The Overground didn't exist until 2007 - where did all the red roundels go?! How annoying. Confusingly the Underground and Overground services are listed on the same arrivals board by the time they're scheduled to arrive and their destination, like in all train stations, but unlike all Underground stations where it just counts down the minutes to their arrival. There is no differentiation between what service they are, so unless you're used to it you don't know what's coming until it rounds the bend.

The platforms are old but the station building is mush newer, although not in any fancy or interesting way - it hardly looks much grander than a bus shelter, not helped by it's location just off a main road above the railway in what feels like a bit of a wasteland.

Wikipedia entry here.

175. Harlesden

Saturday 8th June 10.20am

It was certainly sunny at Harlesden but not busy at all. Turns out that almost nobody wants to head north on the Bakerloo line on a Sunday morning.

The station building itself was tiny, nestled between the railway and a surprisingly busy road but not on the same level as either. The barriers in the ticket office - one in, one out - were both open, which confused both me and my Oyster card.

Wikipedia entry here.

174. Brent Cross

Monday 3rd June 4.30pm

This was renamed after the shopping centre it's near to although as I was wandering around I saw no sign of it, and two other people asked me where it was so I'm guessing it's not that near. It's not like you could miss a shopping centre is it?

I seemed to go into this through some side entrance, down a narrow alley between houses where it seemed to be hiding in some trees. I'm guessing that all grew up around it after. Another above ground platform. It wasn't very busy.

Wikipedia entry here.

173. Hendon Central

Monday 3rd June 4.05pm

This is one of those stations that's in a row of shops and has flats on top, overlooking a roundabout, which is probably brilliant if you live there as everything is nearby and connected. But it doesn't make for a good picture. The booking office is actually quite plain, just painted white and not remotely decorating, so its Grade II listing can't be for that.

The platforms are lower than the station but are above ground, which is confusing as Hampstead, just a couple of stops further along is the deepest tube on the underground. But I guess that's how hills work. It was sheltered but sunny when I was there, and I quite like the wooden frame around the station name on the roundel (it looks like something my Dad might have made) although there wasn't much space to photograph it.

Wikipedia entry here.

172. Plaistow

Saturday 16 February 11.30am

While I'd heard of this because of differing ways you could pronounce its name I would have assumed it was in a bit of south London not served by the Tube. I really am rubbish at geography.

The station sits on a bridge over the tracks and is quite imposing as you walk up the street to it. It appears to be cube shaped, with the two sides I saw being identical, but then inside it feels different with the passage from two doors leading to the ticket hall and the stairs to the platform all feeling a bit unsymmetrical. I'd like another look at that.

By coincidence I was in the area for an exhibition and two of the paintings were of this station. Here's one:

Wikipedia entry here.

171. Upton Park

Saturday 16th February 11.15am

I'd never heard of this station and if pushed might have assumed it was somewhere in suburban north London, when in fact it couldn't be more East End - just a couple of stops from Bow and the nearest station to West Ham's football stadium before they moved to the Olympic park

It's a very traditional station with just two platforms with stairs to the booking hall which leads directly onto a busy high street, which is a bit of a shock really as I was expecting something quieter and more suburban.

Wikipedia entry here.

170. Mile End

Wednesday 3rd October 4.25pm

Part of this station is an island platform with pillars in between which are benches. The benches are crying out for roundels on them, like lots of other places on the Tube but there aren't any - I walked the length of the platform hoping to find some but no, so we're left with modern metal ones which somehow feel a bit disappointing.

It has a surface building but it's really just an opening in a row of shops. It did have a pair of roundels sticking out from it, one with "underground" on it and the other with the name of the station on it. I'd have liked to get a picture of them but it didn't feel like the kind of street where you could stop and do that.

Wikipedia entry here.

169. Bethnal Green

Wednesday 3rd October 3.50pm

This has got the older yellowy tiles that you see elsewhere on the Tube and as a bonus has nice lettering above it, which proved too difficult to photograph in any useful way. The whole station is below ground, most of it probably under the crossroads you come up to. It was really quite when I was there and after months of failing to get there it felt like a bit of an anticlimax.

Wikipedia entry here.

168. Canon's Park

Saturday 17th February 10.50am

This station does the surprisingly common but still confusing thing of being at a different height to the one next to it - whereas Stanmore, where I'd just come from, involved stairs to ground level, this station is under a railway bridge and you have to climbs stairs to the platforms. The ticket hall bit is probably about as small as you can get but it's so quiet that one set of barriers are permanently closed. I do like these kind of stations, even if the fact they're elevated means they're the exact opposite of what the Tube is about!

Wikipedia entry here.

So that completes the Jubilee line, making it the third one to be completed. It's not really the most useful line for me and I felt like I had to go to most of the stations just to tick them off rather than having a legitimate reason to use them. And it really is a line of two halves - the north-western end of it, which was previously Bakerloo line and Metropolitan line feels exactly like that, but the new bits feel like the future even after all these year: all that metal and raw concrete, all those big spaces! Westminster was bound to impress as it was so close to Parliament, as was Canary Wharf as it's literally all about the money, but it's two of the smaller stations that really impress me most: Bermondsey, when you turn off the platform to the escalators and above it is a great big box of light, and Southwark, with the big cylinder over the ticket hall, the big blue wall, the curved openings to the escalators and the corridor between the platforms that somehow feels Russian. Both stations in areas with no obvious need for such great stations, which is the beauty of public transport surely? I'm hoping these sort of stations will be a template for Crossrail although I suspect that concrete is a bit last century and they'll be softened with tiling. Shame.

167. Stanmore

Saturday 17th February 10.25am

The end of the Jubilee line! There's a different feeling about these end of the line stations - the trains just waiting there, not poised to leave at any second take a bit of getting used to, and because it's in the middle of nowhere (relatively) it's not busy, and there's no need to run for a train. The sunny day made it feel more relaxed too.

There's parking beside it for lots of trains so I imagine that looks impressive when it's full. The station itself is up an unexpectedly long flight of stairs from the platform and the building itself looks like the houses in the surrounding area, which makes sense as it started life as a Metropolitan line station, before switching to the Bakerloo line and finally the Jubilee line.

Wikipedia entry here.

166. Kingsbury

Thursday 18th January 1.20pm

I approached this one on foot and nearly missed it as I'd convinced myself it would be on the right-hand side of the road and it wasn't. This wasn't some map-reading stupidity - I just felt that's where it ought to be. Instead it's on the other side of the road in a row of shops, and you'd easily miss it anyway.

Wikipedia entry here.

165. Queensbury

Thursday 18th January 1.00pm

For a suburban station you have to walk along quite a long corridor to get from the platform to the actual station building, or perhaps it just felt it as I was sharing the corridor with someone having a tedious conversation on their mobile. The station itself has toilets, which is something you almost never see although I didn't venture in.

Outside there's a roundabout with a roundel in it:

Although there's a footpath on the roundabout I'm not sure how you'd get to it as it's a roundabout and the inner lane is also a taxi rank. It's interesting to see they've put solar panels on it.

Wikipedia entry here.

164. Wembley Park

Thursday 18th January 12.55pm

This is the nearest station to Wembley Stadium but also to Wembley Arena, which means I must have been through it on my way to gigs at the latter but I not really sure I remember it as it is. At some point this century it's had improvements to help cope with the huge amount of people going to the new stadium,hence the fancy new front:

That lettering on the top looks like something they do on the Overground and really should have been blue so it stands out more. And those steps are a bit of a hazard. I can see how they're needed to get lots of people in and out quickly but they're steep and if someone fell it would be like dominoes. On the other hand they'd be great for a line of dancing girls to high-kick their way down.

Wikipedia entry here.

163. Preston Road

Thursday 18th January 12.30pm

This is one of those stations that I'd never heard of before and if you'd told me the name I'd have guessed it was some little stop on a branch line in the middle of suburbia, which I suppose it is only it happens to be on the Tube. Who even knew there was an area of London called Preston? (Although it is basically Wembley.) It's one of those stations that you don't quite notice in a row of shops, which seems practical and appropriate.

Wikipedia entry here.