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.

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.

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.

150. Hampstead

Saturday 8th April 12.00pm

I'd purposefully decided to go south from here as apparently the tiling on the platform still has its old name - Heath Street - but I couldn't spot it and only noticed it right at the end of the platform as I was on the train out! I resisted the urge to get off at the next station and head back just to take pictures of tiles - that would be silly wouldn't it?

I remember using the station years ago and found it easily on a corner although for some reason one of the entrances is permanently shut which might make it a bit of a bottleneck if it were busier. It's also the deepest tube station although you'd never actually know it!

Wikipedia entry here.

149. Golders Green

Saturday 8th April 11.30am

This confused me a bit - you exit the platform down stairs despite it not feeling remotely elevated and only a few hundred yards before the station coming out of a tunnel. But then then as I walked from the station to Hampstead I realised why - there's a great big hill between the two! It's also quite weird to see 'crematoriums' on the signs for local destinations as you leave - I can't imagine that happens anywhere else.

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.

112. Tooting Bec

Saturday 12 December 11.45am

Finally a station that is a bit different - this one is on a crossroads so as well as the main station entrance there's one on the opposite site of the road which is basically stairs to a subway and a small newsagents, all housed in a far grander building than you'd expect, with three big glass roundels letting light down the stairs (which stupidly I forgot to photograph).

Wikipedia entry here.

111. Tooting Broadway

Saturday 12th December 11.30am

More nightmarish double-height lettering!

This is very similar to the other stations on this bit of the line as they were all designed by the same man. I can see the benefit of making them all the same - less work, identifiable brand, familiarity makes them easier to navigate - but it also makes them a bit samey and easier to pass through without noticing anything interesting in them. Shame.

Wikipedia entry here.

110. Morden

Friday 11th December 5.35pm

The southern end of the Northern line and also the most southerly station on the Tube network. I kind of feel that in some way that ought to mean the station is more spectacular, but it's just another building in a row of shops. The only weird thing about it is that there are platforms either side of the train so the doors open on both sides at the same time, although quite why I'm not sure. Just because they can I guess.

Wikipedia entry here.

109. South Wimbledon

Friday 11th December 5.30pm

I walked to this in the dark and came at it around a corner so I didn't get to see the impressive front at all. Inside it's very much like most of the other stations along this stretch of the underground: short escalators down to platform level with impressive up-lighters (which one day I'll take a picture of) then either a right of left turn to the north- or south-bound platforms.

I really don't like what they've done with the roundel though - it's not just that it's on two lines so it makes the central bar too wide, they haven't kept the circle the same size so you see less of the central white bit - they've just made it the same as all the other roundels so it's not actually a proper circle! Oh dear, oh dear.

Wikipedia entry here.

108. Colliers Wood

Friday 11th December 5.15pm

That horrid wooden framing around the name really grates on me and yet it keeps turning up in so many different stations south of the river! At some point I'm going to buy some wood and make a copy of it just to prove how home-made it looks!

Elsewhere in the station there's still some old signs:

I'm guessing at some point the colour of the Northern line was brown rather than black, or perhaps they just weren't bothered about these things?

Wikipedia entry here.

108 station means I've now covered 40% of the Tube stations. This is what that looks like on a map coloured in with a cheap highlighting pen:

As with all of these milestones it's simultaneously brilliant but also makes me realise how much is left to do - it's taken three years to get this far, and that's just the easy (central) bits!

101. Archway

Saturday 31st October 6.25pm

I nearly couldn't find this station as the building it's part of was covered in scaffolding and also next to a big junction on a busy road that turns out to be the start of the A1. Any interesting surface buildings have long since been replaced so it's a fairly unremarkable station withjust an escalator down to platforms serving a single line. Even the nice tiling (like Highgate) has been taken away.

Wikipedia entry here.

100. Highgate

Saturday 31st October 6.05pm

I liked this as soon as I got off the train as it's got interesting tiling:

The station itself seems to be built into the side of a hill with several exits, and inevitably I picked the least interesting but most confusing one, which led out into a car park and immediately disoriented me. You can tell I'm getting further away from zone 1 and moving into suburbia as the station actually has a car park. It's a pity I hadn't visited in the daylight as the station seems to have been an interesting part of an abandoned line, some of which is still visible and which sounds really interesting. I think I'll have to visit again.

Wikipedia entry here.

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.