please empty your brain below
Didn’t there used be a sand drag at that buffer which, according to Sir John Betjeman, was home to a colony of scorpions?

Marc | 28.07.18 - 7:20 a.m. | #

Your insistence on using coloured text is pure stupidity. Reading yellow text on grey via a mobile phone is virtually impossible. Have some thought next time to your partially sighted viewers. I shouldn’t have to use different formatting techniques in order to read this article.

dg writes: Everything in yellow is deducible from the surrounding text.

Mark | 28.07.18 - 7:24 a.m. | #

@Mark. If you cannot read today’s post you can apply for a refund of your fees paid. Click the yellow link

Incredulous | 28.07.18 - 7:43 a.m. | #

Weekend with no work and new geeky websites to explore? Weekend sorted :-)

Thanks DG!

Jon Jones | 28.07.18 - 8:07 a.m. | #

Mark makes a serious point. I used to be able to read the blog in ‘reader view’ , but this option appears not to be available. I’m unsure how the yellow text can be deduced by context, especially when it’s a paragraph heading?

NLW | 28.07.18 - 8:19 a.m. | #

Easy ... I just highlight the offending text (as if I was going to copy it) and hey presto it emerges from the yellow miasma

Caz | 28.07.18 - 8:45 a.m. | #

Why was Ongar chosen as mile zero?

It wasn’t the oldest line and it also isn’t the line that extends furthest from London.

Dan | 28.07.18 - 8:46 a.m. | #

Reader view still works, if a little oddly, if you start from the permalink (time of posting)

Mike D | 28.07.18 - 8:52 a.m. | #

@Dan

The datum point of Ongar was used because anywhere else (except Chesham) would have required some points to be negative.

timbo again | Homepage | 28.07.18 - 9:02 a.m. | #

But Ongar wasn't originally part of the Underground, presumably it would have been x miles from Liverpool Street mainline station, so when did London Transport decide to remeasure everything from one point, why bother, and using km instead of miles.

Prior to remeasuring, what were the original measurement points for the Central, District etc.

Still Anon | 28.07.18 - 9:03 a.m. | #

"Underground distances are shown to two decimal places, in line with official figures, using the system introduced in June 1972"

...that's from the (extensive) notes on the map I linked to in the last paragraph of the post.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 28.07.18 - 9:10 a.m. | #

The route I would have guessed would be central, district/Hammersmith and city (ex- metropolitan) at Mile End, metropolitan st Baker Street, then jubilee at Finchley Road and Baker Street again for bakerloo. This misses circle, Victoria, Piccadilly and northern lines and only adds Hammersmith and city.

Messiah | 28.07.18 - 9:57 a.m. | #

The railwaycodes site is certainly a huge time sink for infrastructure geekery, as it has a huge amount of very detailed information. Nevertheless, don't go on it if you are concerned about data consistency because this sort of railway information has been built up since the early days of railways and there are huge amounts of duplication, redundancy and references to things long gone. The Underground distances may seem slightly odd but being fairly recent it is pretty consistent.

Jimbo | 28.07.18 - 10:29 a.m. | #

A choice of Chesham as zero point would produce negative numbers for such places as Brill and Verney Junction.

Malcolm | 28.07.18 - 12:03 p.m. | #

Why km, not miles?

scrumpy | 28.07.18 - 12:14 p.m. | #

Still Anon,

It is in kilometres because that is what the Underground uses and there are no rules to the contrary. On the other hand, on main line railways there always was (and I believe still is) a legal requirement to mark out distances every quarter of a mile with mileage posts.

Pedantic of Purley | 28.07.18 - 12:16 p.m. | #

Thanks DG - I didn't know the system for measuring distances on the Underground was introduced as recently as 1972, hence km makes more sense - there I was thinking that it was introduced back in the 1940s when all the extensions were opened, and some chaps in tweed jackets and smoking pipes decided to throw off conventional thinking and go metric.

Still Anon | 28.07.18 - 12:47 p.m. | #

I imagine that prior to 1972 every line had its own system in miles and chains dating from construction.

The old Metropolitan mileages still exist as Network Rail mileages between Amersham and Quainton Road (however the approach into Marylebone uses GCR mileages measured from Manchester London Road via Sheffield Victoria!).

Gregg | 28.07.18 - 1:12 p.m. | #

@Malcolm - neither Brill nor Verney Junction were part of the Underground in 1972.

I notice that, despite the "Railway Codes" website's derived distances the Northern City Line still used miles from Moorgate in 1975 (see the Official Inquiry into the crash). By 1972 the NCL was not directly connected to the rest of the system - the Highgate route had been closed in 1971 so stock transfers had to run via Kings Cross and the "Widened Lines".

timbo again again | Homepage | 28.07.18 - 1:23 p.m. | #

These numbers can also lead to a common orientation for all tube lines. So that "up" trains are those going towards the higher numbers (typically westbound or northbound).

One of those things which ought to be useful for something, though I can't think quite what.

Malcolm | 28.07.18 - 5:46 p.m. | #

What purpose is achieved by knowing how far a station (particularly on a different line) is from one place (particularly Ongar)?

kev | 28.07.18 - 6:16 p.m. | #

@timbo,

Do you mean that there was a connection between the NCL and the widened lines at Moorgate? I would have thought that the levels would be wriong.

Sorry if I have misunderstood.

Thanks

zin92 | 28.07.18 - 6:26 p.m. | #

I thought the connection between the two systems was a Farringdon, there was a goods yard there.

There is a photo in the long defunct Railway World (?) or Railway Magazine of the empty stock move at Kings Cross heading towards Finsbury Park, having passed through the tunnel.

I have found this b/w example on ebay of a stock move in the opposite direction.

Still Anon | 28.07.18 - 8:16 p.m. | #

Kev

The kilometre posts give a useful reference for describing any location for maintenance work etc in a standard way without relying on physical objects such as bridges or platforms. The Ongar bit was probably the result of asking an engineer to devise the system.
There's probably a much more hi-tech way of doing it nowadays.

Andrew S | 28.07.18 - 8:32 p.m. | #

The yellow text is illegible on my tablet even with reasonable eyesight, but I still think the extra interest and subliminal information added by the colours is worth the effort. It turns black when I highlight it.

Andrew S | 28.07.18 - 8:44 p.m. | #

I cannot help but wonder how the Elizabeth line might be drawn into this web of distances, and where the transfer point would be, and have come to the conclusion that it must be Stratford, i.e. a datum of 27.43

Romfordman | 28.07.18 - 9:04 p.m. | #

The Elizabeth line uses kilometres measured from zero at the Royal Oak portal, meaning that unlike tube lines the km increase going eastbound, not westbound. (Obviously the bits beyond Royal Oak and Pudding Mill Lane are Network Rail's and use the usual miles and chains.)

Gregg | 28.07.18 - 11:27 p.m. | #

Just for clarity - the only rail connection between the Northern City Line (now known as the Moorgate branch) and anything else is near Drayton Park, where it has always been connected to the NR main line just south of Finsbury Park. Nowadays of course that is a normal running line, but when the NCL was a tube line, its trains had to use that connection to get on or off the line. They then needed a way to get back onto the tube system. After Finsbury Park to Highgate was torn up, they had to be taken (towed by battery locos) through Kings Cross and the the York Road/Hotel curves, onto the Met via crossovers on the widened lines. There has indeed never been a direct connection at Moorgate.

Malcolm | 29.07.18 - 12:03 a.m. | #

I was there two months ago, a day as sunny as I am now back in Hong Kong.

According to EOR, the signpost was unveiled by the then Management Director of LU.

And I think EOR was doing a good job by arranging an ex-LU vehicle (the visiting Met No.1 Steam Loco) to park closest to the buffers.

Patrickov | 29.07.18 - 3:26 a.m. | #

@Malcolm

Historically most Underground rolling stock couplings were "handed" - a left handed coupling ("A-end") could only couple to a right handed one ("D-end"), and each unit had one of each. (Ambidextrous couplings need some connections to be duplicated or stacked one above the other, both difficult to arrange in the very limited space available on the end of a Tube car).
A common orientation made it easier to arrange stock transfers between lines. (And yes, the loops at Hainault, Kennington and Heathrow do complicate matters)

timbo again again again | Homepage | 29.07.18 - 9:23 a.m. | #

The District Line was l think measured in miles from Mansion House in both directions. LT had concrete mile posts in open sections though few were left by the late-70s.

Kim | 29.07.18 - 11:26 p.m. | #











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