Category: Architecture

  • Railways and Canal Tunnels

    When one thinks of railways and ‘canal tunnels’ one thing would come to mind and its the Canal Tunnels that belong to Thameslink! They are indeed named after the Regent’s Canal beneath which they pass. Its misleading however because they are not strictly a tunnel like that nearby at Islington where the same canal passes…

  • The fact Cockfosters station – an appraisal was popular prompted me to dig out this further look at one of the Piccadilly line’s iconic tube stations. Although we regularly visited Southgate in the 1960s, at no time was the Piccadilly line ever used this far. However the station certainly is remembered because this was where…

  • Despite being the butt of many a joke, ‘Cock Fosters’ as it once was, is a real place and noted for being the northern terminus of the Piccadilly Line. The location itself prior to the opening of the tube was not even a major settlement of any sort, just a small school and a vicarage.…

  • Bishop’s Bridge Paddington, sited high above the railway tracks, was formerly the iconic bow girder construction that stood right across the Paddington station throat. Upon its roadway level there were a number of buildings that could be accessed and these included cafes, railway offices and the Paddington suburban/Metropolitan platforms ticket hall. The construction was built…

  • Could this photograph from 1937 be the best ever composition taken on London’s tube? It’s certainly very unusual for its time because it suggests a substantial abstraction and mystique. We do not know who the subject is other than its a guy in a bowler hat and his entire figure is almost in shadow. Perhaps…

  • This is the third part of the feature on Thomas Telford’s achievements. The first part of this feature used colour versions of the Rosoman painting located on the left hand side of the work sourced from the Internet with some upscaling involved. Th post depicts the structures on the right hand side of Leonard Rosoman’s…

  • This is the second part of the feature on Thomas Telford’s achievements. Telford was of course one of Britian’s greatest engineers – except he built few railways but mostly roads or canals. Many of his canals in fact supplemented railways built by others. In the first part we looked at Telford’s Wesh achievements namely the…

  • This isn’t some anatomical write-up on the composition of Thomas Telford’s body! Rather its a relatively unknown painting that commemorates his life’s work. There’s barely anything on the internet about this painting thus I deemed it an appropriate move to write a post about that work. How this came about is I didn’t know about…

  • Tower Subway gets filmed!

    London’s mysterious Tower Subway, which opened in August 1870 and was the site for the city’s very first tube railway even though that was a small narrow gauge line with just one carriage carrying a few passengers a time under the Thames, has been the subject of curiosity for decades because many spot its circular…

  • Tube Viaduct Mystery!

    Remember the Arnos Park viaduct mystery? How many arches did it actually have? Here’s another London Underground Piccadilly line viaduct mystery. And this time the answer is a balls up… Let me explain. Arnos Grove station has an exhibition on its footbridge detailing the history and construction of the station and the Piccadilly’s extension to…