London's Transport in Miniature - Scavenger Hunt

On Saturday we were luckily able to fast track the ginormous queue at the Acton Depot as we were taking part in the Flickr Scavenger Hunt there. I've been to the London Transport Museum at the Acton Depot a few times, but have never seen a queue so long. However, it might not have just been the popularity of seeing the overspill of the musuem's exhibits & mini transport. Fimb reminded me it's been one of the few times there haven't been weekend engineering works on the Tube lines going to Acton on an "Open Weekend" at the Depot!


Jemimah, Jon, Dav and myself formed an intrepid team where we ambled round the crowds, trying not to step on small children or knock thermos flasks out of men's hands, in our search of photographic clues.


Some of the clues were so fiendishly difficult and we got waylaid just by taking pictures we liked (like the Lego London Underground set above), that I'm amazed we completed as many clues as we did.


Plus, Dav got a bit lost on the way there and had a mini tour of the many Tube stations of Acton, taking pictures in their waiting rooms before eventually ending up at Acton Town.

However, we did manage to correctly capture some clues:


"A little bit of the future - going to the stars but underground" was a model of The Space Train, complete with transparent space age men.




The two pictures above are of "A little big apple rolls down the avenue" which was a miniature display of fictional New York Subway station and its surroundings, complete with a police arrest at gunpoint in front of a giant child.

"A beatle sized replica" or rather Abbey Road was a popular draw:


I got too excited about the mini Trotter mobile from Only Fools & Horses to spot the mini Beatles crossing the road in front of the Tube station in the background! Fortunately Jemimah concentrated on the min John, Paul, George and Ringo a bit more:


We had fun with some of the clues we got wrong. For example, how else would you interpret "Love me Tender, love me true. When the bus breaks down this'll come for you".


Than with an Elvis car. We were pleased to win a prize for most inventive photo of a clue for this one.

We diligently collected lots of pictures of Timepieces, Fire Buckets and Way Out signs on our journey round the depot


We took a break from the exhibits & crowds to do the following shot "Show your group sitting on a bench at a closed station"


However our arms weren't quite long enough to get the full "Museum" station roundel in.

Back inside we managed to find "Somewhere to hide when the bombs start falling"


As Jemimah said: "This intrigues the heck out of me. A one person nuke bunker? Doesn't look too hot really. But even if it worked...one lonely survivor. Sad cold object."

We also had to find "A doubling of a ticket price in two photos"


Jon said "40p? Tch, that's only a tenth of what a single fare is now".


We found a very old and knackered looking "underground interloper from British Rail", in the shape of a Waterloo and City Line carriage.


Back in the shiny 1938 stock, we decided this would be a good setting to "Re-enact what it may have been like during the rush hour"


So we got in as much misery and pained expressions as we could.

Jemimah & Jon were intrigued by some old ads in the carriage:




"Astonishing adverts: "Ring-a-job. Men just dial and listen" These days, that costs £1.50 a minute...", said Jon.


There are many other answers to the twenty "Wordy clues", group photos, targets and picture clues on our sets. So please check them out and comment away on the pictures, as there's still a prize in the offing for best photo: Jemimah, Jon, Dav and myself.

Finally some thanks are definitely in order. Thanks to Qype for the prizes, thanks to Cowfish, Mondoagogo and Blech for the inventive clues and thanks to Jane Findlay and the Community Team at the London Transport Museum for giving us a great day out.

UPDATE - BTW if you wanted to see the full set of clues and answers they're all on Cowfish's blog.