#Specifically the Bakerloo Line from Baker Street to London Waterloo.

[itslookingback]

I Need To Draw Sherlock Holmes on the London Underground

[nathanfoadstanaccount]

The London Underground in The Empty Hearse: Part 1 - Basics of the Underground

I love the tube almost as much as I love Sherlock Holmes, and so the London Underground plot line in TEH is super interesting for me - especially because it’s full of tube-based plot holes and inaccuracies! I’m really excited to combine these two fields of interest in some analytical posts. This series may help non-Londoners if you’re writing fic about the tube, or you may just find it interesting as there’s lots of cool trivia about the tube and London in it, and if that’s not for you, there’s also a lot of pretty screenshots of John and Sherlock coming up. Something for everyone!

I’m going to go through chronologically in a series of posts, pointing out things that people not familiar with the tube system may have missed, some insight into how they filmed these scenes, and a few bits of meta and headcanons we can get from this information, as well as laugh at a couple of silly plot mistakes. Feel free to message me if there’s anything specific you want to know, I love talking about this topic. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform; this hype train is ready to leave!

This first section pre-games may writing on TEH with some basics of the tube system. If you’re familiar with the tube system, you probably don’t need to read this, but feel free to anyway, I’m not gonna tell you what to do, live your dreams, but here’s you’re warning that this section isn’t really focussed on Sherlock.

Lines

The tube network has 11 official lines, but this is hotly debated amongst the TFL (Transport for London) fandom. Yes, there is such a thing. It’s mostly middle aged men. I’m very out of place there. Without going into deep fandom politics, there are other parts of the transport network which are on the tube map which aren’t underground lines, like the Docklands Light Railway (self-driving overground suburban trains),  the London Overground (like the underground, but…overground) and the Croydon tram network. Don’t get bogged down with those, they aren’t as fun because they aren’t old and in tunnels. 

The actual tube lines all have a line name and colour for identification. Here’s some info and stereotypes about each line:

Bakerloo line - Brown - Harrow and Wealdstone to Elephant and Castle

If your grandpa was a tube line, he’d be the bakerloo. Slow, clunky and old, with lots of war stories. He’s trying his best, but it’s not surprising that he sometimes takes the afternoon off.

Central line - Red - Epping to Ealing Broadway/West Ruislip

In the summer, this line is as hot as satan’s crotch, and just as unpleasant. In winter it can be a pleasant refuge from the cold.

Circle line - Yellow - It’s a circle… almost. More like a spiral since it was extended to Hammersmith.

Tourist line. You can’t get on a circle line train without seeing a London guidebook or someone holding a tube map upside down and looking confused.

District line - Green - Where doesn’t this line go? Upminster to Wimbledon/Richmond/Ealing Broadway/Kensington (Olympia)

Take the district line to go the same places as the circle line but avoid the tourists.

Hammersmith & City line - Pink - Hammersmith to Barking

No one even takes this line, idk. They probably got on it by accident.

Jubilee line - Grey - Stanmore to Stratford

BUSINESS MEN AT BANKS AT CANARY WHARF IN SUITS DOING THEIR SERIOUS BUSINESS COMMUTING TO WORK WHERE THEY DO BUSINESS

Metropolitan line - Purple - Aldgate to Amersham/Chesham/Watford/Uxbridge

This line goes all the way to zone 9, where the fuck. It’s more like a commuter train, not really used to get around London itself.

Northern line - Black - Morden to Edgware/Mill Hill East/High Barnet

Just a line. It’s chill.

Piccadilly line - Dark Blue - Cockfosters (ha) to Uxbridge/Heathrow Terminal 5

If you aren’t a true Londoner you take the tube from Leicester Square to Covent Garden, costing you like £3 for a 5 minute walk. This line is famously unreliable, there was a famous incident a couple of years back where leaves on the track broke all the trains.

Victoria line - Light Blue - Walthamstow Central to Brixton

Fast speedy zoom zoom line!

Waterloo & City line - Turquoise - Waterloo to Bank

This line just shuttles between these two stations. What even is the point.

General Information

Zones are how prices are decided, zone one is central London, the higher the zone number the further into the suburbs.

Station layouts are generally made up of a surface building, a ticket-barrier, and escalators or lifts down to platform level, where there are corridors leading to different platforms and trains. 

Fares are paid through contactless card, Oyster card (pre-payment cards, you load them up with money at stations) or occasionally paper tickets, although (contrary to where you might see either use in TBB) most Londoners would use Oyster or contactless.

If you’re struggling with how to pronounce any station names or just want a good time, this is a song with every tube station in it. It’s super cheesy. Have fun.

Trains are different for each line; generally the lines use all the same trains.

The tube network has more overground track than underground; in central London the tube runs underground, but in the outskirts the lines tend to emerge into the open.

Trains usually run every 2-3 minutes, from about 4am to 1am. Some lines run 24 hours on weekends, the Night Tube. Message me if you want more info on that because it’s complicated and unless you need to know about it for an actual reason, it’s not interesting.

Rush hour/busiest times are approximately 7:30-9:00am and 5:00-6:30pm.

The key etiquette rule of the tube: never make eye contact and never speak to people if it can be avoided at any cost.

Next time: John takes the tube to Baker Street. Can we work out where abouts in London John lives with Mary?

Tag stash: tagging a few people who have shown interest in this topic in the past, message me if you want in/out. There’s about 5 more posts on this to come, because I didn’t want it to be one ridiculously long thing...

@hiatusfandom-sendhelpatonce @devoursjohnlock @madisdad @johnlocked-of-course @jvhnlck @sarahthecoat​ @fanfictionrecommendations-com  @221b-brett @aeveris @snekkydetective @elldotsee @wildishmazz @howtotreatyourwatson @srebrnafh @innerdarness @sherlockedcarmilla @iamnotinnocentanymore

Edit: the tags are done properly now and I’m no longer a mess (kinda)

[aroundtheworldinsearchofcoke]

Day Twenty-Four: Under London

https://aroundtheworldinsearchofcokev.blogspot.com/2019/07/day-twenty-four-under-london.html

St. Pancras – or to use it’s full name, St. Pancras International – resides among crowded real estate. Right across the road is one of London’s other major rail terminals – Kings Cross – and it’s just down the road from yet another at Euston. The reason for this was a phenomena known as Railway Mania, in which dozens and dozens of railway companies sprung into existence in Britain – the Midland Railway (St. Pancras) wasn’t about to ask for access to Great Northern Railway (Kings Cross) track, nor that of the London and North Western Railway (Euston).

Today, St. Pancras serves as Britain’s rail gateway to Europe, by way of the Eurostar high-speed train through the Channel Tunnel. As a result, it is one of the busiest in the city of London, and is served by no less than six Underground lines – on paper. In reality, although all of these lines serve the same station in theory, they’re often quite a hike a way from each other. The walk to the so-called sub-surface lines is a long one indeed, going right under Kings Cross to the other side of the complex. This is where I began my expedition this morning.

If you can find a Tube map, you should bring it up. You may want to follow along.

The first train I boarded was on the Metropolitan Line, the oldest underground railway line in the world – it opened in 1863, using steam power. This naturally caused problems and was thus electrified at the turn of the century. It’s called a sub-surface line (or a cut-and-cover line) because it is pretty much right below the surface – the builders literally dug up the street, built a railway line, and then covered it up again. In the modern day, there is very little difference between the Metropolitan and the other sub-surface lines – they use the same ultra-modern S-stock trains introduced a few years ago. They are smooth-riding, air-conditioned and comfortable, but one misses the older trains they replaced. They smelt, they were loud, they were hot, and they had character.

I went as far as Euston Square on this train – one stop down the line – and then changed to the Hammersmith and City line to Baker Street, which still retains much of its Victorian character. I got off there to wait for a Circle line train to carry on… and wait… and wait… and wait…

Thoroughly browned off, I eventually got in another Hammersmith and City line train to Edgware Road to try finding a Circle line train there, and as luck would have it, there was one on the very next platform. We passed Paddington – this is another famous London termini – this time for the Great Western Railway – and will one day be a key stop on Crossrail (or the Elizabeth Line, as they call it) – it’s also nearly completely on the surface, giving a rare moment of (cloudy) sunlight on this voyage.

The Circle took me to High Street Kensington, where I swapped trains again to the District line. I reached Earl’s Court, changed to another District train heading towards Tower Hill (despite being a ‘line’, the District has a bewildering number of branch lines) and finally got off at Victoria (yet another terminus – this one for shared by the South Eastern and Chatham and London, Brighton and South Coast Railway). Here I left the sub-surface and went down into the Deep Tube.

Here I boarded the Victoria line, perhaps appropriately. This is one of the newer Tube lines, constructed in the late 1960s. It is also the line I most rarely use, although I can’t really fathom why. There’s nothing wrong with it, the stock (2009-stock) is fairly modern – I suppose there’s just always a better route from where I happen to be.

This was the beginning of what I shall call a series of one-stop ‘hops’ – I got off at Green Park, near Buckingham Palace, and swapped to the Jubilee line, the newest on the network – it opened in 1979. As a result, it is probably the least exciting, yet it’s rarely too busy either. At Bond Street I changed trains again to the Central line. The Central line is always, always, always packed – probably because it runs right through the middle of both the City and Westminster, past the big banks and corporations. As a result, despite its vintage (1900), it’s probably my least favourite of the Deep Tube lines.

No matter, I was off it after one stop – Oxford Circus. I proceeded to the Bakerloo line – definitely my favourite. The aesthetic is perfect – the old, somewhat hazy stations; the smell; the trains, the oldest remaining on the network (1972-stock). It feels like an old noir movie or 1930s film. Alas, my time on the Bakerloo (so named because it connected Baker Street and Waterloo) was short – I got off at Piccadilly Circus.

From there, it was the Piccadilly line – which uses the almost-as-elderly 1973-stock. It was a quick hop to Leicester Square – realistically I could have walked, but I had no intention of leaving the Underground until I was done. At Leicester Square, I swapped to the Northern line, the oldest of the Deep Tube lines (the first section was opened in 1890.) From there, it was – appropriately – northbound, past Tottenham Court Road, past Goodge Street, past Warren Street, past Euston (not to be confused with Euston Square), until I reached my final destination…

I understand most of you are probably a bit confused. Mornington Crescent is something of an old in-joke – it gave its name to a spoof game show in the 1970s, in which contestants improvised stupidly complicated rules to the ‘game’ of Mornington Crescent; it basically amounted to shouting Tube stations randomly un til somebody got to Mornington Crescent and ‘won.’ It was also well known for being closed at weird times, although in recent years that hasn’t been the case, and for being a bit hard to get to (as you need to get on a specific branch of the Northern line.) Basically, Mornington Crescent is an object of great affection for rail and underground enthusiasts.

That meant it had to be the end of the line. Here I was, at the end of a journey that had taken me on every single regularly-operating tube lune on the network (the Waterloo and City is closed on Sunday and also doesn’treallycount), without visiting any stations or lines twice. How did I feel?

There was a strange sense of anti-climax, once the novelty of Mornington Crescent wore off. I was standing in a tube station, totally alone, looking at a station sign. I was hot, thirsty and sweaty from the humidity of the Deep Tube. I had completed this task that I had wanted to do for as long as I remembered, and perhaps in doing so, some of the magic of the ideawore off. What had I actually done?

I had ridden some trains, most of which were basically modern, past what was essentially a bunch of names with no real context. A lot of the old characterof the Underground of my mind – the dirty old trains on the Circle and District lines, the endless procession of buskers in the tunnels, the eccentric opening times for the various stations – they’re mostly gone now. Perhaps much of my ‘old Tube’ never really existed. Such is the power of nostalgia.

I travelled back to Oxford Circus, in silence for the most part. The trains (I had to change to the Victoria at Euston) rattled and rumbled, screeching on the curves, and all the masses of people around either stared at the paper or the map printed above them. Nobody looked around. Nobody took interest in what, to them, was just another aspect of life. And yet I was gripped by thoughts of the glimpses of mystery in the tunnel – strange lights, mysterious doors, tracks that led nowhere, brickworks covering closed stations. I wondered what secrets might lay beyond them, waiting to be discovered.

And you know what? I hope I never find the answer. The fictional ideas I form around them are far too exciting for that.

---

And no, before you ask, I didn’t spend all day riding public transport.

After my voyage, I headed to Hamleys, because why the heck wouldn’t you go to Hamleys? It’s Hamleys. I bought a goods wagon and Bentley car for my layout, and then walked to Trafalgar Square. I recuperated from my experience there with a coke, and then went to the National Portrait Gallery.

Some people thing portraits are boring. These people are wrong and they suck, but they think that and free speech is a thing. Portraits reveal so much about people – artist, subject and the world they lived in. For example, the portraits of the Plantagenet kings in the gallery, painted long after their deaths and more based on Shakespeare than reality (which sucked for poor old Richard III.) Or you might look at the paintings of Charles II and William III, and compare the man who revelled in luxuries and riches and the man who revelled in soldiery and battle. It shows how much things have changed, too – the image of female beauty changing from plumpness to rail-thin stomachs, the rise and fall of military heraldry and dress; there’s a magnificent portrait of Clive of India in one room, and a plain bust of Nehru, one of those who tore down all he made, in another. Backgrounds go from plain, stoic black to sweeping panoramas of battle and lush landscapes. I’d recommend a visit – see it for yourself, make your own impressions.

Plus it’s free.

After that, it was off for home, where I write this now. It’s been a long day; tomorrow we do very little, before on Tuesday we set out west on the next stage of this adventure…

No, not to America. To the West Country.