In 1932 Arsenal became the only football club to have a Tube station named after them. This is the story of how a station helped lure the club north and of Herbert Chapman, the man who was determined to see that station renamed.
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Down Street: The Secret History of a Lost London Station
It was early one autumn evening in 1940, as the Luftwaffe’s bombs fell on London overhead, when Mr G. Cole-Deacon finally got the call. Cole-Deacon, the secretary of the Railway Executive Committee, had half expected …
Continue readingLondon 2050 (Part 5): Peak Tube
According to the London 2050 report’s forecasts, the demand for the Underground will rise by 60% in the next thirty five years. That’s a challenging target to address with additional capacity, given the pressures the …
Continue readingThe New Tube For London: The Driverless Train With A Driver
On the 9th October, at Kings Cross, TfL unveiled the latest concept for the New Tube for London (NTfL) – the rolling stock design that will serve the majority of the “Deep Tube” lines, beginning …
Continue readingLondon Underground: Off-Peak Practice
As we covered in our look at Crossrail’s upcoming off-peak service, when talking about frequencies on London Underground (LU) it is an almost inevitable fact that minds concentrate on the peak period services and the …
Continue readingTfL Confirm Turnham Green Services After Piccadilly Line Upgrade
At the beginning of the month, in our article on the future of the Piccadilly Line, Pedantic of Purley indicated that London commuters would almost certainly see Piccadilly Line trains stopping at Turnham Green on …
Continue readingAutomatic for the People: Driverless Trains and the Underground
In our look at the Piccadilly Line upgrade we explained that the line would be upgraded so as to be capable of unattended train operation (UTO) with the exception of the Rayners Lane – Uxbridge …
Continue readingUpgrading the Piccadilly: Calling Time on Mind the Gap?
In recent months on London Reconnections we have looked at the future of most of the tube lines, with articles on the Metropolitan Line, the other Sub-Surface Railway (SSR) Lines and the deep tube lines. …
Continue readingBig Changes Gonna Come (Part 2): A New Approach to Ticket Sales
In Part 1 of “Big Changes” we took a look at London Underground’s proposed plan for running nocturnal Tube services. Here in Part 2 we now turn to the other major change to the Underground …
Continue readingBig Changes Gonna Come (Part 1): The Night Tube
Last Thursday at Piccadilly Circus, in front of a small crowd of journalists and television cameras, Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Mike Brown, MD of London Underground, pulled the covers off of a new …
Continue readingRoundtable: The TfL Draft Business Plan
Transport news, like London buses, often seems to come in clumps. With the various recent announcements it would thus be easy to miss that TfL have published their draft Business Plan for the next decade. …
Continue readingIn Pictures: Brompton Road Station
This post arguably needs little introduction. IanVisits (an occasional and always welcome guest author here at LR Towers) and M@ from Londonist were able to visit parts of Brompton Road, one of the Piccadilly Line’s …
Continue readingWhen PPP And The Economy Bite: Upgrades Delayed Across the Board
Mike Brown, London Underground’s new MD gave his first full interview on Friday to the Financial Times. It was an interview that did not contain much in the way of good news for those interested …
Continue readingPPP Final Report Published
[Apologies for the lack of posts last week – business unfortunately intervened – JB] The PPP Arbiter has made his final direction on pricing for the second period of Tube Lines’ PPP contract – the …
Continue readingThe Man Who Painted London Red
When the architecture of the Underground is discussed, it is nearly always to the work of Charles Holden that comment turns. The reasoning for this, of course, is obvious. In the likes of Gants Hill, …
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