A thread for mumsnet nerds to talk about the history of the London Underground (aka what's your favourite tube station)

[GetOrfMoiIand]

I spent a happy hour looking at this site www.abandonedstations.org.uk/

The history of the tube is fascinating, and I love travelling on it, it is so atmospheric (apart from when I am commuting within London and then I hate it with a vengeance like any normal person reserving special ire for the wanking Circle line).

Some stations feel really evocative - for instance Lambeth North looks as if it hasn't changed since the second world war.

There is a really good Pulp song called Mile End as well.

Not quite the charm of the old ones, sadly

Look at this! www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2012/07/24/a-look-at-some-deep-crossrail-tunnel-shafts/ Big holes in the ground for the Crossrail boring (not that kind of boring) machines.

Oh I love Swiss Cottage station escalators. Looks like something out of Bioshock (fantastically geeky XBox game) all art deco lamps and big signs.

Oh I'll have to look up that Pulp song, GetOrf. I've just been listening to the Jam's Down in the Tube Station at Midnight which is rather freaky actually.

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pulp+mile+end&oq=pulp+mil&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l9j0i5.160.1049.0.3141.5.5.0.0.0.0.158.613.1j4.5.0...0.0...1ac.XuKDccU3JnA

It was on the Trainspotting soundtrack.

This is the documentary mentioned earlier about haunted underground stations and tunnels. Really spine chilling!

Ghosts On The Underground

You can actually watch all of it on youtube, not great quality, but definitely watchable.

Pleeeeeeeease move this thread so it can be kept! I love stuff like this!

That Ianvisits blog is brilliant.

Ooh thanks for that Bertie, going to watch that now I reckon, instead of all the useful things I should be doing.

I'm so glad to have found you all! Fellow geeks!

I love those lamps at Swiss Cottage, too! I was so relieved that they stayed true to the character of the station when they refurbished it. .It seemed to take ages, but it's nice to see them taking care of a lot of these really interesting old features, and even just keeping plain tiling true to the original style of the station.

Mooncup I thought the River Fleet was synonymous with sewage as it was basically a stream of effluent since medieval times? It's probably cleaner now it's underground than when it was above ground.

I love the fact that there are loads of rivers underneath London that we never see. I also really love the fact that Mount Pleasant in Clerkenwell was actually a rubbish dump, and the name was a joke

bert that link is in Italian

Ha, I didn't know that about Mount Pleasant!

Sorry - this is the correct link

(Should really click on things before just pasting them!)

Yes, the Fleet Ditch was famously horrible. Full of dead dogs and general waste and shit. Did you know that right until the early 18th century one could sail up the Fleet as far as Holborn?

The Tyburn is the other great one - it now flows out into the Thames via a very modest pipe just west of Vauxhall Bridge.

That is great about Mount Pleasant.

It is such a shame, that hanuted underground doc was on telly last week, I was going to watch it again. I have just searched sky plus and it is not repeated (amazingly, they normally repeat documentaries on a loop, seemingly)

Ooh, Swiss Cottage. I like the station itself (glam!), but could they make the access to it from Finchley Road a little less scary please?

East Finchley station, by the way, has a really cool art deco archer on the roof that you can only see outside the station if you stand quite a long way away.

Bertie, thank you that's my viewing for the evening sorted I love this thread!

It made me laugh, I was just waiting for it to kick in in English

Another thing which is a bit creepy, in the Horrible Histories book about the Victorians it talks about the underground, and apparently they dug through loads of pauper graves to make some of the tunnels

I will definitely watch it again at some point but not tonight - I know I won't sleep Enjoy!

Now this site is properly geeky. Someone has walked the course of the River Fleet and photographed it, with relevant information. I'm quite tempted to walk the route myself one day

I love that haunted Underground programme, that made me start listening for strange things... ooh, and isn't that the one where they see a ghost out the window on a train and think it's an old poster but it's clearly not!?