On 11 Nov, 20:30, "Paul Scott" wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote in message

ups.com...

[crossposted to uk.transport.london and uk.railway]

Lots of other comments have already been made as to what the new
branding will be, whether existing trains will get new liveries, what
signs will be replaced and when. I don't think ephemeral changes such
as this are really the important ones - it's real changes that people
care about.

...... of the places where there have been significant rebuilds. Instead
of pokey ticket office windows (which used not to be open for business
that often anyway) there are now large all-seeing windows, and a
number of stations are having ticket gates installed (I noticedbrand
new ones at Acton Central just the other day).

I always think that is an improvement many older tube stations should
have...

Some LU stations at least will be listed I suppose.

Why is it that the Victorians deemed that railway booking office
windows were to be pokey little holes?


Many of the stations have also recently been painted. I suspect this
was TfL funded too, though it may have been National Express (owner of
Silverlink) making a rather late and forlorn attempt at impressing TfL
so they might be in with a chance of winning the concession to operate
the LO service. But the point is stations are now starting to look
clean and cared for, rather than grotty unkempt untidy graffiti-ridden
holes.

A number of recent threads have mentioned that LO branding wouldn't appear
unless a particular station has reached an acceptable state, so that state
must be typified by Highbury & Islington, where the platform name boards are
LO style including the orangeroundel, I wasn't too impressed by the white
on orange text for the station name though. So IMHO there are a couple
along towards Willesden Junction that meet that sort of condition and could
be 'LO'd' quickly. Also heard from a fellow traveller that the LO platforms
at Harrow and Wealdstone have been 'done'.

Woah - hold your horses! Take a look at this post on "The Transport
Forum" which is a fairly authoratative sounding report on a talk given
at the LT Museum on the upcoming Overground rebranding exercise (I
think I found the thread because of a reference to it here on utl,
either that or when I was perusing the District Dave forums):
http://billz1064.proboards1.com/inde...d=119067291 3

First off there are going to be signs such as the one you saw at
Highbury & Islington - akin to conventional station name boards - as
can be seen courtesy of these Flickr contributors:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8197729@N04/1972512679/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tompagenet/1969527149/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tompagenet/1969520873/

The post said they'd "temporary sign" written on them but this appears
not to be. The latter two photos show that the new sign is in fact
just a sticker stuck over the old name board.

Crucially though the post there will be a second stage to this
branding process - when the stations are up to the required standard
(i.e. not for a while) then they will receive a proper LU style name
board - i.e. the stations name will feature in the horizontal blue bar
of the roundel.


Lastly, I'm pretty sure that someone's actually got round to washing
many of the previously dirty seat cushions on the class 313 trains.
This shouldn't be a miracle, but it is! These trains only have to last
until next year, so I don't expect big changes (or a new damn livery)
but if TfL can ensure they each get a bit of an internal scrub - or
even (to use the fashionable term) a 'deep-clean' - then it'd be a
great and very visible improvement.

Can report some trains have a large black on white vinyl 'LondonOverground'
on the side, the one I travelled in had good clear Overground network maps
and up to date 'tube+overground' maps fittted neatly over the old Silverlink
maps, many pax seemed quite interested in these...

Paul S

The white vinyl sticker on the train can be seen he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tompagenet/1970358860/

(Flickr's amazing/bizarre - someone always seems to have taken a photo
of the thing you want to look at and actually uploaded it and tagged
it - at least this often seems to be the case with regards to London
transport... er, 'things' !).

Regarding the interior maps in the 313s - I might be wrong here but as
I recall Silverlink's maps as being somewhat less than helpful. They'd
have one map that showed the Tube Map - but not the outer reaches of
the network, and I don't think it featured the North London Line! The
other map was a diagram of all the Silverlink Metro routes (and was a
somewhat less than pleasing design). I'd often see passengers looking
bemused as they looked from one map to the other and tried to mesh the
information together in their head.