Clive D. W. Feather wrote:
In article . com,
umpston writes
In the old building next door to the station site there is a very nice
pancake restaurant called 'My Old Dutch'. I once heard a rumour that
trains are audible from the basement loos but I've never been able to
hear them.

I have.


I guess you must have been there when the restaurant was quiet! All I
could hear was the gurgling of the cistern and the revelling of my
fellow diners.

So perhaps there IS a forgotten trapdoor with a rusty padlock
underneath the loos in My Old Dutch!

On 7 Dec 2006 10:21:34 -0800, "umpston" wrote:

alex_t wrote:
I wonder, is there any official way to see some closed stations like
Aldwych or destroyed ones like British Museum? (for the purpose of
non-commercial photographing by tube enthusiast ;-)

LT museum used to do occasional tours of Aldwych and Down St. but not
in recent years. Some say this is for 'security' reasons; others have
said it is due to Health & Safety considerations - these places are,
after all, dark dirty and dangerous. So I guess your options are
getting a track/tunnel maintenance job or hiring Aldwych station -
which is frequently used for filming.

The most interesting part of Aldwych station was not the bit you get
if you hire it for filming (since to be honest it just looks like any
other but maybe slightly dated tube platform, which is what filmmakers
want!). No, the other platform that was closed for decades, and the
tunnels to/from it, behind the lift shaft, were much more interesting,
as they were much more "frozen in time" than the more recently closed
parts. There's a few pictures on the sites you linked, showing some of
the areas where they tried out different station finishes, but they
don't really show the whole place. There are some tunnels at Aldwych
which never opened to the public because they just ran out of money,
so they were never fitted out; I think I remember they were had the
lining rings fitted but that was about it. No nice paint, or tiles, or
even lights, and just a barely level floor!

The sites make very little mention of the passageway to Temple, which
I know is there because we walked through it on the tour I did (LT
Museum, years ago), again it was in quite a state of disrepair.

It's a shame that H&S has effectively killed these tours. I would
happily sign a piece of paper to say I'd bear all cost of any injuries
I might suffer for the chance to do the tours again.

Peter Frimberley wrote:

snip

The most interesting part of Aldwych station was not the bit you get
if you hire it for filming (since to be honest it just looks like any
other but maybe slightly dated tube platform, which is what filmmakers
want!). No, the other platform that was closed for decades, and the
tunnels to/from it, behind the lift shaft, were much more interesting,
as they were much more "frozen in time" than the more recently closed
parts. There's a few pictures on the sites you linked, showing some of
the areas where they tried out different station finishes, but they
don't really show the whole place. There are some tunnels at Aldwych
which never opened to the public because they just ran out of money,
so they were never fitted out; I think I remember they were had the
lining rings fitted but that was about it. No nice paint, or tiles, or
even lights, and just a barely level floor!

The sites make very little mention of the passageway to Temple, which
I know is there because we walked through it on the tour I did (LT
Museum, years ago), again it was in quite a state of disrepair.


OK - it's the last sentence I'm interested in - the Aldwych to Temple
passageway you talk of.

I ask as your post was the first I'd ever heard of it. I can find no
references to it's existence on the web, and searching usenet has thus
far only led to various threads where contributors talk of past plans
for foot tunnel that never came to fruition.

Such talk does however focus on the possibility of a proper interchange
tunnel for passenger use - whilst the passageway you speak of isn't
public.

If anyone has further information on this please get involved!

In message .com,
Mizter T writes
OK - it's the last sentence I'm interested in - the Aldwych to Temple
passageway you talk of.

I ask as your post was the first I'd ever heard of it.

I'd not heard of it either. I managed to get on a tour of Aldwych a
couple of years ago where we got to see both of the platforms, the one
used for filming and the other one which looks untouched for decades.
They also allowed us to walk some way along one of the rail tunnels
towards Holborn - we gave up when we got bored by the lack of scenery I
think. And while we saw a lot of the deep tunnels - almost all I'd have
said - and discussed the reasons why it was impractical to continue the
running tunnels any further towards the Thames, there was no mention of
any connection to Temple.

--
Clive Page

In message ,
writes
The same thing happens at York Street station, on the Piccadilly Line.

York Street?

ITYM York Road?
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)

Steve Fitzgerald wrote in message
:

In message ,
writes
The same thing happens at York Street station, on the Piccadilly
Line.

York Street?

ITYM York Road?

Why *did* some London roads change from "X Road" to "X Street" or
vice-versa? Was it an attempt to reduce the number of duplicate street names
in different parts of London?

In article , a@b (Martin Underwood) wrote:

Steve Fitzgerald wrote in message
:

In message ,
writes
The same thing happens at York Street station, on the Piccadilly
Line.

York Street?

ITYM York Road?

Why *did* some London roads change from "X Road" to "X Street" or
vice-versa? Was it an attempt to reduce the number of duplicate
street names in different parts of London?

Almost certainly. There was a vogue for it in various places early in the last century.

--
Colin Rosenstiel