I mentioned a few days ago the collaborative art project Living In A Tube Map. I have now posted a few photos of tube stations that I have visited (although I didn’t make a special trip, which is the real point of the site).
Anyway, I saw another link on the wonderful Going Underground blog to another site with tube station photos on it which is part of another art project, this time funded by the London College of Printing. These are magical photographs, originally taken on black-and-white stock then hand-coloured using Photoshop. This gives them a sort of 1950s look which is charming. I suggested to the artist who came up with Living In A Tube Map that she link to the relevant station photograph on the London Station site, on the basis that even if it isn’t relevant to her original vision it is still a cool thing to do.
The great thing about Living In A Tube Map is the clickable tube map. This is what makes it a great starting point for a wider project. There are already a number of other resources that could be linked to from this sort of clickable map:
Using Embankment as an example: Living In A Tube Map page for Embankment London Station photograph of Embankment Flickr photos around Embankment London Bloggers near to Embankment Google results for “London Underground Embankment” TfL official information: station facilities at Embankment TfL official information: train times from Embankment TfL official information: train times: Bakerloo line at Embankment TfL official information: station accessibility at Embankment: Villiers Street TfL official information: bus connections from Embankment TfL official information: site search for Embankment
Unfortunately there’s no good way to deep-link to all the station information on the TfL website - you have go to the TfL clickable map and endure their java. For DLR stations there is a linkable page: here is the one for Bank.
So, where am I going with this? I think there is a place for a clickable tube map that supports wiki-style pages including all the above links (and more that I haven’t thought of) plus comments and opinion from tube users. A tube-users’ resource combining official information with popular input.
Problems? Firstly, I’m pretty busy myself so this isn’t going to happen anytime soon if I have to do a lot of the donkey work. Second, the tube map is owned by TfL so I imagine it is within their power to stop it being used in a way they consider inappropriate. Unless there was some kind of agreement with them the project would be vulnerable to them pulling the plug at any time.
The Living In A Tube Map site would be a great start though.