Design Excellence for the Masses - London Transport Museum Talk

On Tuesday 13th April 2010 the London Transport Museum will be celebrating two design heroes from the early 20th century in an illustrated talk. The hour long talk, "From the sublime to the ubiquitous" will be given by Oliver Green. It will focus on Frank Pick, the chief executive of London Transport in the 1930's and Ambrose Heal, who founded Heal's furniture store.

New Johnston Font photography by Andrew Black

Both were founder members of the Design and Industries Association & talk will explore how each applied the DIA's slogan "Nothing need be ugly" to all aspects of their work.

Green argues how this slogan went well beyond the promotion of their own companies and encouraged a new appreciation of the importance of design in everyday life. Frank Pick was given responsibility for London Underground's publicity in 1908 and commissioned its famous Johnston font. He asked Johnston for a font with 'the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods' while 'belonging unmistakably to the 20th century'.

Oliver Green's always a great speaker (I last saw him at the Transformed by Tube night) and this should be an interesting presentation. Tickets can be bought in advance here or reserved by calling 020 7565 7298. It starts at 18.30 at the London Transport Museum at Covent Garden Piazza and admissions charges are: Adults £8.00; senior citizens £6.00; students £4.00.

UPDATE - The London Transport Museum have very kindly offered a free pair of tickets for the talk. Just email me or leave your answer in the comments or @AnnieMole me on Twitter with the name of the nearest Tube station to Heal's flagship store on Tottenham Court Road. We'll announce the winner on Monday!

Perfect T Shirt for Tube Travel

Sometimes there's something about the daily London Underground commute that can only be expressed in one word.


I think this T-shirt, spotted this morning, says it all.

If I'd have been one of those over jolly people who always insist on telling people to "Cheer up, it might never happen", I would have done. Although I get this feeling this guy might have said "It already has".

Circle Line suspension caused by 1980's computers

If you were one of the people delayed by yesterday's Circle Line closure put it down to 1980's computer "burn out". A London Underground spokeperson blamed "antiquated assets" for the most of the line being suspended throughout the day. An IT error led to the signal problems, although this morning's signal failures were unrelated to "Back to the Future" style computers.


TfL told IT Pro "Our engineers worked through the night to repair the problems which caused yesterday's suspension but a new problem developed this morning.

"The bottom line is that it's exactly these kind of antiquated assets that we're seeking to replace with the upgrade programme we’re carrying out at the moment."

In January it was announced that SAP-based TfL is preparing to sign an extensive range of framework agreements, totalling a potential £70 million and covering IT services. I'm not techie enough to know how much of this will be signal related, but hopefully with a 70 million quid investment we might be lucky for the lines to see some computers that were made this century.

East London Line - soft launch - 15th April

London Reconnections are reporting that the new East London Line (ELL) is likely to be open for a period of limited passenger service referred to as a "live testing operation" from 15th April 2010.

More photos from Londonist's tour here

"During this period, services will run between New Cross Gate and Dalston Junction, Mondays - Fridays only. There will be no early morning or late night services, with a 7am - 8pm pattern (or thereabouts) running. Full evening and weekend services will begin on the official opening date."

The full service is due to open on May 23rd. Once it's fully up & running, Transport for London estimate that around 100,000 people to use the service daily. As the line offers a link between parts of London that have long needed good transport connections, it should be a success.

One of the more important questions, is posed by Londonist: "It does, however, pose a significant hazard to pub quiz-masters and London Underground trivia hounds: should London Overground be counted as a proper Tube line or not?" More crucially, will it be included in the Tube challenges, where people try to visit every station on the network in the shortest possible time?

UPDATE - looks like this soft launch might not be happening until next week now - London Reconnections

UPDATE - The soft launch of the East London Line eventually took place on the 27th April 2010

Circle Line cooled by Large Hadron Collider?

According to the Independent the London Underground have been approached by particle physicists to install supercooled magnets and collision detectors at strategic positions on the Circle Line. Cern believes it build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider within the Circle line by 2020.


"Although there are still considerable technical problems to overcome, such as a geo-magnetic "kink" in the circuitry at Edgware Road station, Cern is quietly confident that it will be able to convince London Underground of the merits of the scheme, which should result in the first air-conditioned underground line as a spin-off of installing supercooled magnets below ground. The idea was initially mooted in the mid-1980s as an alternative site to the 27km tunnel below Geneva but the idea was dropped."

Mmmm! The Independent article first published yesterday, claims to have talked to a a spokesman for London Underground who said the proposal 'is not as foolish as it first seems: "It has merits." '

Judge for yourself whether a Professor Lari Polof or Doctor Olaf Priol was involved in the discussions which "would mean that two beams of protons would be travelling in clockwise and counterclockwise directions at 99.999999 per cent of the speed of light, within feet of Circle line passengers stuck in perpetual immobility."