Down in the tube station at lunchtime

Our trip to Down Street went very well thanks for asking, feel very lucky to have had a bit of a spy around. It's not normally open, but someone has to go down there and do regular inspections so we managed to tag onto the back of that. The station was closed in 1932 not long after opening, and then used for storage, and as offices and shelter during the war. I half expected to see it slightly staged like the tunnels under the Dover cliffs, with typewriters still on tables and things, but no. There are genuine thick layers of dirt over everything, with occawsional disturbances where it'd been used for storage over the years. Trains still run through it obviously, though mostly the platforms were closed off so you wouldn't see it from the train unless you were looking for it. I'm surprised it's not been reused as offices or warehousing or most likely a secure data centre.

Anyway, see my pictures that I posted earlier. Might be back to update this later with witty observations cribbed from other members of the party. Not all the pictures below are from this event, not quite figured out how to make the flickr badge thing show random pictures that have a particular tag AND are from a certain date / set only AND in such a way that it's automated on here... will fix that in a bit.

pauly :: 2006 :: Comment / reply

RE: Down in the tube station at lunchtime

you should probably link to here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_Street_tube_station as it has a good entry on this. in fact the section on disused lonton tubes is proper fascinating. on a similar point, i found out what that thing is that runs down the middle of Kingsway from Aldwych to Holborn - it's the remnants of the old tram system. VERY interesting.

mOOMINTRUDE :: 14 Mar :: 2006 :: Comment / reply

I did link to that page, check the message again

Think it's on all my messages about the station. Yeah I read about that in that book I mentioned Underground London

pauly :: 14 Mar :: 2006 :: Comment / reply

RE: I did link to that page, check the message again

whhhoopps. yes you did - i'm using IE which doesn't get on with your pages very well - especially the flickr stuff so if i put the mouse cursor near the text the whole page goes haywire :o(

mOOMINTRUDE :: 14 Mar :: 2006 :: Comment / reply

nurr yes keep meaning to look at that

it's not just IE it does it on all browsers, flashign pop ups over images that are links :-(

pauly :: 14 Mar :: 2006 :: Comment / reply