Categories
Europe 2017 ????????????????????

Overground, Underground, wombling free

Backdated. Posted 29/10/2017. Before we headed back to Australia, one more day in London to explore… at least for most of us. Three of us were catching an evening flight, but M had to head back 12 hours earlier, departing on a morning flight. I walked her to the station and helped her (and her  ... [More]

Categories
Europe 2017 ????????????????????

East meets west

(Backdated. Posted 29/9/2017) Good morning! It was garbage day in our street in Chiswick. As usual, you notice the little things that are different from home. In the London Borough of Hounslow, the garbos (what’s the local term? Not sure) don’t have an arm on the truck that grabs the bins; they have to manually  ... [More]

Categories
transport

FOI shows early planning under way for all-night weekend trains in Melbourne

News from London is that they are planning 24-hour Tube services on five lines from 2015 at weekends. It’s tied to a grand plan which will also see staff taken out of ticket offices (in favour of helping customers more directly, for instance with ticket machines), more Wifi on stations, and contactless bank card (eg  ... [More]

Categories
Geek transport

Google celebrates 150 years of London Underground – and could we have bought Oyster?

As seen at google.co.uk on Wednesday. Very cool. (Large version found via the Going Underground blog) Note the subtle shading of fare zones, which reflects how they look on the official maps. It’s been claimed in the past that in Melbourne we couldn’t adopt an existing smartcard ticket system like Oyster because Melbourne had specific  ... [More]

Categories
Home life transport

London Underground shower curtain FTW!

With thanks to my sister, who picked this up for me during a work trip to London last week. (I needed a new one.) If you’re in London you can get them from the excellent London Transport Museum shop. Otherwise, at the online shop. (It’s so big and my bathroom is so small that it’s  ... [More]

Categories
Geek Politics and activism transport

My new desktop wallpaper

Cattle class, anybody? The picture is from a Friends of the Earth stunt in London, protesting against factory farming, and their link to rainforest destruction. There’s some great images of cows on the streets and on the Tube.