So, in the start of the month round-up, I mentioned that Sci-Fi Weekender had been cancelled with only a few weeks notice. This meant that we had three nights of childcare arranged, with no plans. So, as this post goes live, Christine and I will be on our way down to London.
It’ll be my first trip to London in two years, although Christine has been more recently for some conferences related to her work. Normally we go once a year, so a two year gap is unusual for me. We’re travelling down by train, as per usual; I drove to London and back once, and vowed never to do so again.
It’s also the first time since 2021 that we’ve had a child-free weekend in London. We, of course, love our ten-year-old to bits, and there’s no shortage of things to do in London as a family. But when it’s just two of us, we can just be a little more agile and spontaneous, and can be a bit more daring when it comes to food. Plus, some of the places we’re planning to visit are things that our ten-year-old would either dislike or find boring. Instead, they’re staying with my cousins, and then with my parents in York.
That being said, as I write this, we haven’t firmly decided what we plan to visit. So far, we’ve got the train and the hotel booked, and may go and see a West End show one night. The trips to London we’ve enjoyed the most have had a mixture of planned and spontaneous activities, so we deliberately don’t plan the trip too much before we arrive.
I’ve got a few pre-written blog posts to go live over the next few days, and then I’ll write about where we went. See you soon.
I think, in my mind, UNESCO World Heritage Sites are relatively unusual, and that most people would have only visited one or two in their lifetimes. As it happens, there are well over a thousand UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the world, in over 160 countries. 35 of these are in the UK alone. So, with this in mind, here are all of those that I have visited, split by country.
Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd. These are specifically the castles at Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy, and Harlech in North Wales, of which I’ve been to Caernarfon and Conwy (and will be re-visiting Conwy this summer).
Frontiers of the Roman Empire. This encompasses multiple sites, some of which are in Germany, but the bit I’ve been to is Hadrian’s Wall. This was when I was still at school and before my blogging days, so I don’t have any photos or blog posts to share.
Canterbury Cathedral. This was way back in 2000, when you could enter the Cathedral Close without having to pay anything. My last visit to Canterbury was in 2019 for work, and by then the entire Cathedral Close was pay-to-enter – as I only had a short amount of time before my train home, I didn’t.
The English Lake District. Apparently the entire national park was also designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. My most recent visit was in 2012, albeit just for a day which was spent in Keswick and up Latrigg, so that one of my friends could bag her final Wainwright. So although it wasn’t a world heritage site when I visited, I’m counting it.
Ironbridge Gorge. Another one that I have memories of, but my last visit was when I was very young and so I don’t have any photos. Now that I live towards the western edge of West Yorkshire, rather than York, we’re quite a bit closer to Ironbridge and so we may need to plan a trip there.
Maritime Greenwich. Been through Greenwich a few times, most recently in November 2022 when we went to the National Maritime Museum. I had only recently re-started blogging at the time, so no blog post about it.
Old and New Towns of Edinburgh. Our last visit to Edinburgh was in 2011, although we passed through in 2015 on the way to St Andrews as mentioned above. Our nine-year-old hasn’t been to Scotland yet so we may need to consider a trip sometime.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. We visited around the same time as our trip to the Lake District in 2012. Again, somewhere we need to take our nine-year-old in due course.
Saltaire. Our nearest UNESCO World Heritage Site, it being in the same county and neighbouring borough. Blogged about in 2013, but we’ve visited more recently than that.
The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales. North Wales again! We passed through in 2019, on the way back from Sci-Fi Weekender in its final year in Pwllheli, however, it was only designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021. Again, we’ll be back there again this summer.
Studley Royal Park and Fountains Abbey (National Trust). Last visited in 2020, as it was a mostly outdoor place where we could see my parents in person for the first time since the beginning of lockdown earlier that year.
Tower of London. Last visited in 2016, when our nine-year-old was still a baby.
Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City. I’m including this for the sake of completeness as a previous visit in 2010 was during its time as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, it was removed in 2021 due to new buildings being constructed that were ‘out of character’. Most recent visit was last year.
Barbados
Barbados has just the one UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is its capital, Bridgetown. I went on holiday with my parents in 2000, as I’d turned 16 and it was their 25th wedding anniversary. To date, it’s the only time I’ve been to the western side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Belgium
La Grand-Place, Brussels. I had a weekend in Brussels with my parents in the early 2000s. At the time, my mum worked for a charity that was applying for a six-figure sum of funding from the European Commission, and so it was decided that she would submit the funding bids in person so that there was no risk of it getting lost in the post. We therefore went as a family and made a weekend of it, travelling down on the Eurostar.
Historic Centre of Bruges. The whole of central Bruges is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it’s easy to see why as it’s lovely. Previously I’d been briefly with my parents in 1992, on our way back from a holiday in eastern France.
France
France is the country that I’ve visited the most after the UK, so it’s not surprising that I’ve visited several UNESCO World Heritage Sites over the years.
Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments. I’ve been to Arles more than once, with the most recent visit in 2003. It’s an amazing place – Arles retains its Roman amphitheatre.
Canal du Midi. I’ve been past bits of it. It’s a 150 mile long canal from Toulouse to the Mediterranean Sea at Agde, which I last visited in 2003.
Historical centre of Avignon. I’ve been to Avignon a few times, as we used to use Auto-Train (aka Motorail) quite a lot. My parents would take several days driving down, stopping off at places of interest on the way, but we’d put the car on the train and travel back overnight to save time on the return journey. Sadly, these services were discontinued in 2019.
Saint-Émilion. I’m pretty sure I have been here, but don’t ask me when.
Mont Saint-Michel. Last visited in 2018, in a holiday that I haven’t written about yet but probably will do later this year.
Nice. Last visited in 2001 when I went on a fly-drive holiday with my parents.
Greece
I have been to Crete, which is home to several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but as I was only three years old at the time, I don’t really remember it.
Ireland
I have been to Ireland – well, Dublin. There are two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Republic of Ireland, but neither of them are in Dublin, so I haven’t been to them.
Italy
I have been to Italy twice – once to Venice, in 1999, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and once on a day trip in 2001 to Ventimiglia, a town known for its markets on the French border, which isn’t.
Jordan and Oman
I have been to Amman in Jordan, and Muscat and Salalah in Oman, but this was a work trip so I didn’t get to see any of the heritage sites whilst there.
I’ve been to the northern coast of Spain once, staying near Santander, but it was thirty years ago and so I can’t remember whether we visited any of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites there.
Switzerland
I’ve been to Geneva once, all the way back in 1992, but not to any of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites elsewhere in the country.
Where next
I’ve hinted at a few places that we may go back to in the UK. Next month, there’s a possibility I may check off another international UNESCO World Heritage Site, but I can’t be sure that it’ll happen yet.
Yes, I’m writing about transport in London again, even though I live the best part of 200 miles away. This time, it’s about the ongoing efforts to get diesel trains out of the capital, and what progress is being made. I’m going to look at each of London’s rail termini in turn, and see what proportion of trains are running on electric power.
Background: London’s air quality problem
London, like many cities, has had an air quality problem for centuries. There was the Great Stink in 1858, the rise of pollution during the Industrial Revolution, and more recently, emissions from transport. Though I’ve never lived in London, I’ve made regular visits over the years, and still remember having black snot from the poor air quality.
The good news is that air quality in London is improving. Over the years, the Ultra-Low Emission Zone has expanded to cover just about all of London, and reduced the number of polluting vehicles on the road. Improving air quality has been a particular aim of mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, who has even written a book about it(sponsored link). It’s worth a read – it’s relatively short but gets the message across.
But the ULEZ is just about road transport. Today, I’m focussing on rail transport, and specifically looking at the twelve key London termini. Long-distance rail travel in Great Britain is generally focussed on London, and so if you get rid of diesel trains from London, you also get rid of them from other parts of the country too.
Cannon Street
Starting alphabetically, Cannon Street is the first terminus, and one that I personally have never been to. For many years, it was never open on Sundays, although it has operated seven days a week since 2015. All the trains to Cannon Street are operated by Southeastern, who only operate electric trains. So, Cannon Street is fully electrified – probably a good thing, as it’s an enclosed station with low ceilings.
Charing Cross
A little further west along the River Thames is Charing Cross. Like Cannon Street, it too has low ceilings due to over-site development, and is also only served by Southeastern. So, no dirty diesel trains here either.
Euston
Euston was controversially rebuilt in the 1960s as part of the then British Rail’s upgrade of the West Coast Main Line. This included electrification, and so nowadays almost all of the trains which operate from Euston are electric. Avanti West Coast operated a few diesel services to Chester and onwards to North Wales, but are being replaced with new Hitachi bi-mode trains that can operate on electric power as far as Crewe in Cheshire.
There may be some diesel visitors to Euston on occasion, as services that would normally call at Paddington are diverted to Euston during construction work at Old Oak Common. This includes the Night Riveria Sleeper, and some of GWR’s Hitachi bi-mode trains that may have to run on diesel power as they navigate through their diversionary routes.
Fenchurch Street
Fenchurch Street is the smallest of London’s rail termini, with just four platforms. It’s another one that I’ve never been to, as I’ve never needed to go to places like Tilbury or Southend. If I did, I would be able to catch an electric train there courtesy of c2c, whose entire fleet is electric. Indeed, the lines out of Fenchurch Street were some of the first to be electrified using overhead cables in the late 1950s.
King’s Cross
Being from Yorkshire, King’s Cross is the London terminal I’m most familiar with. Most (but not all) of my rail journeys to and from London include King’s Cross.
Though overhead electric wires were strung up for commuter services in the 1970s, the wires didn’t go north of Peterborough until the 1990s. Even then, British Rail still operated a mixture of electric and diesel trains (the venerable High Speed Train) and this persisted until very recently. Their replacement came in the form of more of Hitachi’s bi-mode trains, introduced by LNER. Such trains are also operated by open access operators Hull Trains and Lumo (although Lumo’s trains are all electric).
The outlier is another open access operator, Grand Central. Whilst they operate a small fraction of the services from King’s Cross, at present, they’re all still diesel-powered. That’s due to change, once again thanks to Hitachi who are building some tri-mode trains that can run on electric wires, batteries and diesel. The order for these was only announced a few weeks ago, so it’ll be 2-4 years before we see the back of the last purely diesel trains from King’s Cross, but there’s good progress being made.
Liverpool Street
I’ve only ever been to Liverpool Street mainline station once, which was to use the Stansted Express back in 2009. That was, and still is, an electric train, and indeed all the trains that operate from Liverpool Street are electric. Well, almost: Greater Anglia has a small fleet of bi-mode trains, which for once are not made by Hitachi but by Stadler. Occasionally these run to Liverpool Street, although their main stomping grounds are across Norfolk and Suffolk running regional services. In any case, they should run on electric power when available, so we can tick off Liverpool Street as being electric.
London Bridge
London Bridge underwent a stunning rebuild in the 2010s. I used the old station a bit pre-rebuild and it was awful – the new station is much better.
In the 1930s, the then Southern Railway invested in extensive electrification of its lines, using the third rail principle. Instead of overhead wires, a third metal rail is added to the outside of the two running rails and trains pick up power that way. As such, almost all of the railways in the south-east of England are electrified. Indeed, many have never routinely hosted diesel trains, having gone straight from steam to electric.
However, a handful of lines didn’t get electrified, including services to Uckfield along the Oxted Line. Therefore, there’s a small fleet of diesel trains that serve London Bridge.
Marylebone
Oh dear.
We were doing so well, weren’t we? Seven stations in, and all were either completely electrified, getting there, or had just a handful of diesel services. And then Marylebone has to ruin everything for us.
Okay, so Marylebone is quite a nice London terminus. Whilst not as small as Fenchurch Street, it’s still quite dinky and less overwhelming than some others. It survived closure in the 1980s, and Chiltern Railways has been one of rail privatisation’s few success stories, with new services, new stations and improvements to infrastructure. Indeed, if you want to get a train between London and Birmingham, and don’t mind it being a bit slower, it’s much nicer going from Marylebone to Birmingham Moor Street.
But Marylebone isn’t electrified – at all. Every service that terminates there is a diesel train. And it shows – the last time I was there, there were advertising boards proudly telling us that they had air purification technology built into them. But this wouldn’t be necessary, if the trains that were calling there didn’t spout diesel fumes.
There have been some lacklustre efforts to improve the situation – one of Chiltern Railways’ trains was modified to be a diesel-battery hybrid, and it could use its battery at low speed and in stations. Alas, this was never rolled out to other trains in the fleet. Also, the oldest of Chilterns’ trains are now around 30 years old and need replacing, so putting up electric wires would be timely to prevent a new order of diesel trains.
One issue is that trains from Marylebone to Aylesbury share track with London Underground’s Metropolitan Line services (a relic from when the Metropolitan Line went all the way to Aylesbury). These lines are owned by Transport for London, and electrified using a unique four-rail system. Any electrification scheme would need to take this into account, especially as TfL probably won’t want overhead wires stringing up over their infrastructure. Dual-voltage trains, which can run on both overhead and third-rail electrified lines, are a thing and are used daily on Thameslink services, for example, but this would need careful planning to work out.
Moorgate
Moorgate is a London terminus, albeit of just one line nowadays – the Northern City Line. Historically, this line was considered part of London Underground and was grouped with the Northern Line, and so it’s electrified.
Until the 2010s, some Thameslink services terminated here too, but these were axed to allow platform extensions at Farringdon station. They too were electric though.
Paddington
Paddington was a latecomer to the electrification party (which sounds like a round from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue). The first electric trains started in the late 1990s, and even then, it was just the new Heathrow Express service. However, the announcement of the Great Western Main Line Electrification project allowed it to catch up, with electric wires extended all the way from Airport Junction in West London across the Welsh border into Cardiff. However, that project also went massively over budget, and as such, lines to Bristol and Oxford never received their wires.
Whilst some electric trains run from Paddington, the majority are those Hitachi bi-modes again, which can run on electric power where available and switch to diesel if needed. This has meant that Paddington has moved from having only a handful of electric trains in the 2000s, to being almost entirely electric now. There’s just a handful of commuter trains at peak times that use diesel Networker Turbo units, and the Night Riveria Sleeper train, which uses diesel locomotives. Perhaps, in future, the Night Riveria will be hauled by bi-mode locomotives, such as the new Class 93 and Class 99 locomotives under construction.
See Marylebone? It can be done.
St Pancras
The rebuild of St Pancras for High Speed One services was excellent. I have vague memories of the tired old station, and now it’s much better.
However, there are still a few diesel trains plying their trade at St Pancras. These are the trains which take the Midland Main Line up to Sheffield and Nottingham. This line should have been electrified in its entirety by now; instead, it’s being done on a piecemeal basis and currently the wires are projected to stop just south of Leicester.
The good news is that new trains are on order – and yes, they’re yet more bi-mode trains from Hitachi, although they’ll be slightly different than the units used by other operators. And East Midlands Railway has introduced electric trains from Corby into St Pancras – impressive as Corby station only re-opened in 2009.
Victoria
Victoria is big and confusing. I’ve used it a few times and can’t say I’m a fan. But all the trains that run from Victoria are electric, so that’s good.
Waterloo
Until the Elizabeth Line came along, Waterloo, with its 24 platforms, was the busiest station in the UK. Now it’s third, but still very busy.
It’s also a bit like London Bridge, in that the vast majority of trains are electric, but a handful of diesel services limp on to serve places beyond the reach of the third rail network. Doing something about these services is more pressing than those from London Bridge to Uckfield, as the trains are older and due for replacement. Various ideas have been floated around, but it seems probable that we’ll see existing electric trains getting batteries bolted onto them, and some discontinuous electrification to charge them up. That could be some of the new Class 701s, which have had one of the most protracted entries into service of any new train, or some Class 350s which are about to go off-lease from London Northwestern.
Conclusion
Overall, the majority of train services into London are already electric, including all services to seven of the twelve stations. Of the remaining five, diesel trains make up a small number of services at three of them, and we’ll likely see the back of the last remaining diesel trains at King’s Cross and St Pancras by the end of the decade. The lack of any sort of electrification at Marylebone is a bigger problem to tackle, but then Paddington has gone from being all diesel to almost all electric within 30 years; indeed much of that progress has been within the last 10-15 years. It’s also clear that bi-mode trains have a future until further electrification outside the capital takes place.
Some lines on the London Underground are simple through routes, with no branches – namely, the Jubilee, Victoria and Bakerloo Lines. For others, it gets a bit more complicated, and so this is a discussion of splitting some lines up, and giving them their own identity. None of these ideas are new – they’ve been talked about for years and exist in some official Transport for London plans – but it’s an opportunity to think of some names for them.
A history of splitting Underground lines
If you look at one of Harry Beck‘s tube maps from the 1930s, broadly speaking, you’ll be able to compare it easily to a modern day tube map – certainly when looking inside the Circle Line. The Victoria, Jubilee and Elizabeth Lines aren’t there, but otherwise, not a lot has changed in 90-odd years.
What you will notice, however, is the Metropolitan Line has lots more branches than it does now. Over time, however, the Metropolitan Line has been split up; firstly, the branch to Stanmore became a branch of the Bakerloo line, and is now part of the modern-day Jubilee Line. Then, in 1990, the line from Hammersmith to Barking was given its own identity as the Hammersmith & City Line, and the isolated East London branch became the East London Line. Incidentally, the East London Line is now part of London Overground, and recently gained its new identity as the Windrush Line.
I mention this because branches of tube lines have been given their own identities before, and so there is precedent for doing this.
The Wimbleware Line
Oh where is the Wimbleware? It’s a colloquial name for a service on the District Line, where trains run from Wimbledon in the south, to Edgware Road in the north. Wimbleware is a portmanteau of Wimbledon and Edgware, a bit like how the Bakerloo Line is a portmanteau of Baker Street and Waterloo, and indeed a contraction of its old name, the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway.
Operationally, the Wimbleware has always been somewhat separate from the rest of the District Line. Whilst nowadays, all District Line services operate using S Stock trains, it used to be that Wimbleware services used a different type of rolling stock to the rest of the line. Most District Line services used D78 stock (some of which is enjoying a new life as Class 230 and Class 484 trains on the main line), whilst Wimbleware services used C stock trains, more commonly found on the Circle Line.
Taking the Wimbleware out of the District Line, and giving it a distinct identity, would significantly simplify how the District Line appears. Right now, you essentially have two eastern branches, to Edgware Road and Upminster, and four branches to the west – to Ealing Broadway, Richmond, Wimbledon, and very occasionally Kensington (Olympia). The Wimbleware would just operate Wimbledon to Edgware services, leaving one eastern branch and essentially just two western branches.
But what will we call it?
I doubt we’ll see the name ‘Wimbleware’ on any tube maps in the future. It’s a nice colloquial name, but we also know that several lines of the London Overground had colloquial names that weren’t used. The Overground line from Gospel Oak to Barking was known as ‘The Goblin’, but its new official name is the Suffragette Line, and the Watford DC Line between Watford Junction and Euston has become the Lioness Line.
My suggestion would be the ‘Carnival Line‘ as it passes through Notting Hill, home of the annual Notting Hill Carnival. As with the new names of the Overground lines, like the aforementioned Windrush line, it highlights and celebrates London’s diverse culture, as well as giving a really obvious suggestion of which line to take if travelling to the carnival.
Alternatively, if permission could be obtained from the estate of Elizabeth Beresford, how about the Womble Line? It would celebrate the famous fictitious residents of Wimbledon Common, who look after the environment by reusing people’s rubbish.
Splitting the Northern Line
Another line that’s rather confusing is the Northern Line, which has two branches which pass through central London, meet up again between Euston and Camden Town, and then separate again. Now, Transport for London has long planned to split the line in two, but the aforementioned Camden Town station is the sticking point.
What is now the Northern Line was formed from two separate railways. The ‘Bank branch’ was the world’s first successful deep tube line, and was known as the City and South London Railway, first opening in 1890. Meanwhile, the ‘Charing Cross branch’ was formed from the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway between 1907 and 1914. Whilst both reached Euston station, they were completely separate until the 1920s. They collectively became known as the Northern Line in the 1930s, as part of the ambitious Northern Heights plan to take over some suburban rail lines in North London. Alas, only some of the Northern Heights plan ever came to fruition.
Splitting the Northern Line into separate branches has some key advantages. Currently, with trains from both the Bank and Charing Cross branches serving both the Edgware and High Barnet branches, there’s a limit on capacity. At peak times, there are 24 trains per hour on the Northern Line – which is still pretty frequent, especially by the standards of trains that I’m used to up here in the north of England. But having two fully separate lines could allow much more frequent trains – potentially as many as 36 per hour. That would be a 50% capacity increase and make each branch of the Northern Line equal to the Victoria Line in terms of service frequency.
The Camden Town problem
I mentioned that Camden Town tube station would be a sticking point. Along with nearby Euston, and Kennington in the south, it would be one of three stations where passengers would need to change from one branch to the other. Remember, the plan would be to completely separate each branch, so trains heading north from Charing Cross would only go to Edgware, and trains heading north from Bank would only go to High Barnet or Mill Hill East. At the moment, you can get a direct Northern Line train from Charing Cross to High Barnet, if you’re prepared to wait long enough – about 10 of the 24 trains per hour make this journey at peak times. Should the split be implemented, you would have to change at either Euston or Camden Town, but with the benefit of much more frequent trains.
So why is Camden Town a problem? Well, it’s just not big enough for a huge increase in passengers changing trains. Indeed, it’s just not big enough full stop; on Sunday afternoons, the station is typically exit-only (meaning you can’t enter the station from the street) to manage crowds. Transport for London plans to build an additional entrance, and add extra passenger tunnels and more escalators. The plans also include providing lift access, making it completely step free; at present, there’s step-free interchange between the two Northern Line branches, but it’s not possible to enter or exit the station without using steps or an escalator.
The plans to rebuild Camden Town have existed for years, but funding hasn’t been forthcoming.
Also, simply rebuilding Camden Town station will not, in itself, be enough. To operate a more frequent service, London Underground will also need extra trains. There were plans to order additional trains for both the Northern and Jubilee Lines, which operate similar trains built around the same time by the same manufacturer (Alstom). However, the business case was hard to justify at the time. Perhaps new trains could be ordered just for the Jubilee Line, and then the old Jubilee Line trains would operate on the Northern Line?
But what do we call it?
If the split does occur, it would be interesting to see if both new lines get a new name, or whether one remains the Northern Line. And if so, which one? I would argue that the Morden to High Barnet/Mill Hill East line (Bank branch) would be the best to rename, as Morden is actually the most southerly tube station on the network. It seems a bit strange that the most southerly tube station is on the Northern Line.
It could honour the original builders of the line and be called the Southern and City Line. The original train company was the City and South London Railway, but I’ve re-ordered the name to match the other two ‘and City’ lines – the Hammersmith and City, and the Waterloo and City Lines. That might get a little confusing with the Southern railway company, although with rail franchises now being brought back in house, that might not be such an issue.
I also note that one suggested name for the line back in the 1920s was the ‘Tootancamden Line‘, as it passed through both Tooting and Camden but also sounded a but like Tutankhamun. However, whilst there are several Egyptian mummies in the British Museum, Tutankhamun isn’t one of them, and the British Museum is closer to Goodge Street on the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line. Also, I don’t think we need another reminder of Britain’s colonial past.
Another suggestion could be the Market Line, as the line passes via both Borough and Camden Markets, and the London’s financial centre. That being said, the closest tube station to the London Stock Exchange is St Paul’s on the Central Line. Although to be fair, the newly-named Mildmay Line is not the closest Overground line to the Mildmay Hospital.
Now, I’m not a Londoner – I generally only have the opportunity to visit London once a year – so I’m sure locals could think of some much better names. I quite like the new names for the Overground Lines, and they celebrate ordinary, modern, diverse Londoners. Which is nice since the three most recent new lines, the Victoria, Jubilee and Elizabeth, have all been about royalty. I’d hope that Transport for London would carry on with interesting new names for any newly-split Underground lines.
A couple of weeks ago, a new Tube Map was published, to coincide with the new names for the London Overground lines. Besides the fact that north-east London is no longer a sea of orange but several different colours, another thing stood out to me. According to the Tube Map, there’s no step-free access on the Waterloo & City Line:
Stations that are step-free have a pictogram of a person in a wheelchair. But the platforms for the Waterloo & City Line show a regular empty circle at both of its stations, indicating no step-free access. So, surely the answer to the question of whether the Waterloo & City Line is step-free is ‘no’?
What does the step-free map say?
Actually, the answer is more complicated than that. Certainly, the Waterloo & City Line wasn’t step free in the past, as I noted in a previous blog post from 2017. But work at both Waterloo and Bank stations has resulted in the installation of lifts, meaning that the line is actually step free.
Transport for London publish a separate step-free Tube map, which offers more detail than the standard one. For example, there are letters (A, B and C) showing how big the gap between the train and the platform edge is (mind the gap), or the letters R and M if a ramp or mini-ramp can be used to help to bridge the gap. And here’s how the Waterloo & City Line appears:
Note that there’s an ‘R’ at both ends, and, unlike the nearby Bakerloo line which is shaded out as being completely inaccessible, the Waterloo & City Line is in its usual colour. So, we can conclude, the Waterloo & City Line does offer step-free access. With the help of staff with a ramp.
So, why do the two Tube Maps contradict each other?
Complicated interchange
Well, I did say it was complicated. The step-free tube map also includes exclamation marks next to some station names. These indicate that there’s additional information to read about how accessible each station is. For Waterloo, it only covers the Jubilee Line; all the information about the Waterloo & City Line is on the Bank listing:
Lifts to the Waterloo & City line are available Mondays – Fridays, via the entrance on Walbrook. Step-free exit at Waterloo is via the National Rail lift (usually available Monday to Saturday 0430 – 0105, Sunday 0530 – 0105). Please check before you travel. Step-free interchange between the Waterloo & City line and the Northern line and DLR requires a 290m journey via street and lifts.
It’s that last sentence that’s worth paying the most attention to. Bank, along with nearby Monument station, is a massive interchange and the second largest on the London Underground after King’s Cross St Pancras. It’s also just had a massive upgrade, adding step-free access to the Northern Line for the first time, and step-free interchange with the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). However, there isn’t a direct step-free interchange between the Northern Line and DLR, and the Waterloo & City Line.
Say, you arrive at Bank on the DLR and can’t use steps or escalators. To get to Waterloo, you need to exit the station via the Cannon Street entrance, walk/roll along Cannon Street itself, turn right up Walbrook and re-enter Bank station underneath the Bloomberg building.
Similarly, the interchange at Waterloo, from the Jubilee Line to the Waterloo & City Line, would require you to go up to street level and through Waterloo mainline station.
So yes, the Waterloo & City Line is step-free, and is indeed the only London Underground line to be entirely step free, by virtue of having just two stations. But it doesn’t offer step-free access in a way that is useful to interchanging passengers. I suppose if you arrive on a mainline train in Waterloo, and your destination is Bank, then it’s fine. But say you arrived on a mainline train at Liverpool Street and needed to get to Waterloo, there are better options that changing at Bank (in this case, Elizabeth Line to Bond Street and then Jubilee Line to Waterloo). And that’s why the standard Tube Map doesn’t show it as step-free.
Quirks of the Waterloo & City Line history
The Waterloo & City Line has always been an oddity. It only became an official London Underground line in 1994, and was previously operated by British Rail. Indeed, its trains originally carried the old Network SouthEast livery, rather than the standard tube livery. When British Rail was privatised, it was seen as an anomaly and so given to London Underground, rather than parcelled up with the other services to Waterloo that become South West Trains (now South Western Railway). As far as I am aware, it’s never operated on Sundays, as it mostly serves commuters, and since the pandemic, there has been no Saturday service either.
It was only the second deep tube line to be built in London, after the City & South London Railway (now the Northern Line). It was built by the London & South Western Railway (LSWR) to provide a link from its major terminus at Waterloo, under the River Thames and into the City of London. At the time, many rival railway companies had stations in the city, and this was the LSWR’s way of competing without needing to buy lots of land, demolish buildings and build new bridges. It’s also the only tube line to be entirely underground, including the depot at Waterloo station (the Victoria Line’s depot is above ground), and it’s completely isolated from all other railway lines. When trains require heavy maintenance, they have to be lifted out of the depot by crane and taken by road.
Since it opened in 1898, the Waterloo & City Line has remained a simple, two station shuttle. Over the years, there have been many enhancement ideas banded around. These have included adding additional platforms to serve Blackfriars station, or trying to somehow join it on to the DLR at Bank to allow through journeys to Waterloo.
Today is election day for much of the UK. It’s not a general election, as much as I would like it to be; that will be sometime between mid-June and mid-January. But here in Sowerby Bridge, we have two elections taking place:
As I am a card-carrying member of the Labour Party, I’ll be voting for them in both elections. It’s likely that Labour will win both too. Our local authority, Calderdale Council, is already a Labour-controlled council, as are the four other local authorities that make up West Yorkshire. And Tracy Brabin, the incumbent mayor, will almost certainly be re-elected. Although very little local polling has taken place, Labour are polling significantly ahead of all other parties nationally.
Over in York, my parents will be able to vote for an elected mayor of York and North Yorkshire for the first time. This will be a more interesting contest, as York tends to lean towards Labour and the Liberal Democrats, whereas the wider (and more rural) county of North Yorkshire leans Conservative. If David Skaith wins the mayoralty for Labour, it will mean that the Conservatives really are in trouble when they finally call a General Election.
There will also be mayoral elections for the first time in the North East and East Midlands, and the Conservative mayors of Tees Valley and the West Midlands will be hoping to be re-elected. Again, should these mayoralties fall to Labour, it’s a sign that the Conservative party are a spent electoral force.
London mayoral election
And there’s the London mayoral election, where Sadiq Khan will be looking to become the first modern mayor to be elected for a third time. The ULEZ seems to be the key issue here; it was a key part of Khan’s manifesto and most of his rivals want to scrap or curtail it. The exception seems to be Count Binface, who instead wants to expand free parking to electric vehicle users between Vine Street and the Strand. Except for those who drive a Tesla.
We’ll get most of the local council elections tomorrow, with the mayoral election results coming in over the weekend. It certainly promises to be an interesting few days in British politics.
The Central Line of the London Underground is not having a good time at the moment. We experienced this first hand on our recent trip to London. As the Young V&A is close to Bethnal Green tube station, when we visited we tried to use the Central Line to head back into central London.
We gave up after two trains stopped where it was literally impossible to fit on. Every carriage was crush-loaded, and this was mid-afternoon on a Saturday – not exactly rush hour.
The issue is with the trains that run on the Central Line. These are 1992 Stock, which, as the name suggests, date from 1992 and were built by the newly-privatised BREL. Specifically, it’s the traction motors on these trains, which are failing at a faster than expected rate. Without a working motor, the trains can’t move, and so they have to be taken out of service. Consequently, there are fewer trains available for service, and so passengers are being crammed into less frequent services.
Transport for London have short, medium and long-term solutions to this issue:
In the medium term, there is the Central Line Improvement Programme (CLIP). This is a major refurbishment of the trains, which includes replacing the troublesome motors as well as installing CCTV and accessibility improvements. For example, trains will now have wheelchair accessible spaces, and there are new screens with visual announcements of the next stop – standard on other lines, but new to the Central Line.
As an aside, I can’t help but feel that CLIP is a boring name when Central Line Improvement to Train Operation and Reliability Investment Scheme was right there. Even if the acronym does spell CLITORIS.
Ultimately, these are 30 year old trains, and eventually they will need replacing. They’re not the oldest on the network – that ‘honour’ goes to the Bakerloo Line, with trains that are over 50 years old. Slightly newer, but only just, are those on the Piccadilly Line, which are being replaced with 2024 stock to support an increase in service. Right now, there’s only funding available for new trains for the Piccadilly Line, but TfL’s long term aim is that the same trains will run on the Central, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City Lines too. Whilst the first units are being assembled in Germany and Austria, most will be built by Siemens in a brand new factory in Goole, East Yorkshire.
Where I live in the north of England, a big deal was made out of the replacement of 1980s era Pacer trains which were no longer fit for purpose. And whilst there’s a feeling in the north that London gets more than its fair share of UK public transport spending, the oldest tube trains are 10 years older than the oldest Northern Rail trains. Ordering a completely new fleet for all the London Underground lines that need it will result ensure skilled manufacturing jobs remain in Yorkshire for at least the next decade.
On our last day in London, we went to the Cartoon Museum in Soho. It’s a relatively new museum, opening initially in 2006 and in its current location in 2019. It’s also quite small – allow a maximum of two hours – but with plenty to see. The walls are packed with illustrations going back a couple of hundred years, right up to now – the newest being Ben Jennings’ cartoon of Queen Elizabeth II taking the Elizabeth Line into the light when her death was announced in September 2022. It is mostly lots of pictures on walls, but there is a Spitting Image puppet on display as well.
At the moment, there’s a Wallace & Gromit exhibition, marking 30 years since the release of The Wrong Trousers. There’s several models on show, as well as some behind the scenes photos and some of the equipment used to film it. You can also see the actual Oscar that Nick Park won, although no photos are permitted of this. The exhibition is on until the 16th April.
There’s also an activity room where you can create your own comic strips, and of course the ubiquitous shop.
Accessibility
The nearest tube stations to the Cartoon Museum are Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. The museum is located in a basement, down a set of stairs, and sadly the lift has been broken since 2022. A recent crowdfunder to fit a new lift didn’t quite reach its goal but hopefully this will be fixed soon. Ear defenders and sensory backpacks are available to borrow once inside.
The Young V&A is the new name for the V&A Museum of Childhood. It’s still in the same place, outside central London in Bethnal Green, but the new name reflects a complete refurbishment. We last went in 2017, and it’s changed massively since then. Before, it was very much a museum, with lots of objects in big glass cases and not much to interact with. Now, whilst there are still some objects to look at, it’s a much more interactive space, and somewhere to bring young children to play. Indeed, our eight-year-old was probably one of the older kids there. Dropping the ‘museum’ from the title therefore makes sense.
The gallery spaces have been split into themes – Play, Imagine and Design. Play arguably caters for the youngest children, although there’s a big screen with a playable Minecraft version of the museum (thankfully it resets regularly to discourage hogging). Imagine includes the dollhouse collection from before, and design looks at how products are designed. There’s a particular focus on recycling waste into useful furniture.
Japan: Myths and Manga
Then there’s an exhibition space, and the opening exhibition is called Japan: Myths to Manga. Whilst the main museum is free to enter, you have to pay to access the exhibition space, and tickets are limited. We made the mistake of not booking in advance, so when we were ready to visit the exhibition on a Saturday afternoon, no more tickets were left. So, we ended up booking tickets for the Sunday and came back the following day.
Personally, I concur with Ianvisits and found the exhibition a little under-whelming, but my wife and child seemed much more engaged. The exhibition is rather sparse, and I would have expected to see more objects there. However, I’m not in the target market for this and we did spend over an hour in the exhibition. There’s several clips from Studio Ghibli films to watch and plenty of Pokemon; but it was also good to read about the traditional Japanese stories and myths which inspired these works.
Accessibility
Because our hotel was located between Aldgate and Whitechapel, we caught the bus to the Young V&A, but it’s also a short walk from Bethnal Green tube station which is on the Central Line. It’s also not too far from Cambridge Heath station on the London Overground, on what will soon be known as the Weaver Line. Around the corner is the new permanent home of the Vagina Museum, although we didn’t have chance to visit this time around.
As you would expect from a recently-renovated museum, there is step free access everywhere, and there’s a dedicated quiet space in the Reading Room. Which we found quite welcome; although the renovation has been extensive, it’s a listed building and so there are limits. Any building popular with children is bound to be noisy, and the open space in the middle is quite echo-y.
Like previous exhibitions at Somerset House, Cute includes some new commissioned art and existing pieces, as well as donated memorabilia. Back in 2021, we went to an exhibition about the Beano, and this filled the same space in the South Wing. It’s an exploration of cute things and its impact on society, including kawaii.
There are some interactive parts too. There’s a room with some arcade games, old and new, including some indie games like Froggy Pot.
Some of the art produced for the exhibition is AI generated, and the theme image features a kitten with a unicorn horn and seemingly seven paws. I suspect that they’ve kept this in because it shows the weird-er side of cuteness.
Pop-up cafe
Alongside the exhibition is a pop-up Hello Kitty themed café. We had to queue to get in, as it’s a small space, but the food was nice albeit very full of sugar.
The exhibition runs until the 14th April, so you’ve got about five weeks to go to see it. We went on a Friday when walk-up tickets were available, but I imagine it’ll be busier at weekends and so you may wish to consider pre-booking. You can also look at all of the objects online at cute.guide.
Accessibility
The southern entrance to Somerset House is the closest to the exhibition, and is very close to Temple tube station on the District and Circle lines. It’s also close to Waterloo Bridge. Whilst there are stairs, all are duplicated by several lifts giving access to the exhibition, which currently have furry insides. Access packs, containing large print guides, noise-cancelling headphones, magnifying glasses and a stress ball, are available to borrow from the box office.
