London Transport Museum Re-opens

After a two year closure and investment of £22.4 million, the London Transport Museum re-opens on the 22nd November. As it's not a million miles away from where I work, I'm sure I'll be dropping in to see what's what. We're promised state-of-the-art recreations, interactives and stunning exhibits. There's an extra floor, more space on the ground floor and a newly constructed basement theatre.


I'm most interested in the promise of transport related cocktails on the Upper Deck café bar. You can lounge around on Northern Line upholstered seats and sip the tantalisingly named The Anorak & Metropolitan Mixture drinks. One can only guess what delights they might hold. I'd imagine The Anorak is made out of cold tea. The Metropolitan Mixture was initially a medicine devised by a pharmacist in Gower Street in 1879 "to ease the plight of persons emerging in distress from the nearby station". Victorian Londoners clearly needed to recover from the early steaming and smoking underground tunnels. So perhaps this cocktail will have a medicinal "pick-me-up" kick to it.

The museum sounds like it's getting very 21st century and is already embracing of Web 2.0 marketing tactics. Apparently they used Facebook to get video clips of commuters' journeys from five ‘global cities’ – New York, Paris, Delhi, Shanghai and Tokyo. Not quite sure why London wasn't included - perhaps no one wanted to watch exhibits of crowded carriages with everyone looking miserable.

The museum also has its own Flickr set and was kind enough to add me as a friend a few weeks ago.

In the "Mystery Objects set" I found the rather strange device above, which they are asking people to guess what it might be. The only clue is that it's from 1990 and I only hope it's not as fetishy as it looks.

Feel free to make a guess in the comments below. Plus if you visit the museum it would be interesting to hear your thoughts. It's always been swarming with kids whenever I've gone in the past and if I went as an adult on my own, I used to feel a bit uncomfortable, but with a few Anorak cocktails inside me, I'd probably be beyond caring.

Update 22nd November - Mike from Trusted Places has written post based on his trip on the morning it opened with some good shots on Flickr.

Goodbye to the promise of cooler Tubes

We're beginning to learn the practical effects of Metronet's collapse. The much trumpeted 150 million quid "cooling" system is now on hold (ie scrapped). The fact that this announcement was made in the middle of November on a wet and cold day, didn't stop it making front page news in The London Paper.



A new mechanical chiller was installed at Oxford Circus Station to cool the main ticket hall at the end of May this year. Similar projects at Euston & Waterloo station will now be shelved.

But it's not just cooler Tubes that are in for the chop. Plans to install lifts where there are none at present will also be delayed - with existing lifts and escalators being repaired rather than replaced. Many new stairways, entrances and exits will also be put on hold. There will also be cutbacks on plans to improve accessibility for disabled passengers.

Transport for London will take over maintenance of the lines early in 2008 after Metronet went into administration in July. Tim O'Toole, London Undergound's MD, said rather obviously: "It is not possible to have a collapse on the scale of Metronet without it having major implications."

However, TfL have to prioritise improvements to the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines - leaving other projects (like cooling the system & improving accessibility) struggling for money. I was shocked to hear that Metronet's collapse is apparently still costing us £13m a week.

Brian Cooke, from the passenger group London TravelWatch reckons the Government should step in and supply the extra funds.

He said: "We still believe that it was central Government which caused the mess of the public-private partnership. They got us into the mess so they should get us out of it. It should pay for any additional costs which LU has to suffer."

As passenger numbers and global warming increase it is more important than ever that measures are taken to keep the Tube cool - though we recognise this is not an easy project."

So remember to follow the wise advice from TfL of carrying a bottle of water and getting off the Tube earlier if you feel a bit too hot.