tubewhore: Finsbury Park

Tubewhore (

tubewhore) wrote,
@ 2007-01-13 13:46:00

Entry tags:

chance encounters with staff, finsbury park, tiling

Finsbury Park
Meeting up with midnightxpress today to see how many stations we can collect in a day. This will be a guerilla affair, of dashing between platforms surface and station, so naturally I wear a corset and heels...nothing like wearing practical clothing for such endeavors, and indeed this is nothing like practical clothing.

However, due to general fidgety malaise I am awake early. In the bath, I hatch a plan: if I stop wallowing about in the bubbles I could head up the Piccadilly Line to where it joins the Victoria at Finsbury Park and still get back down to Kings Cross in time for our rendevous. Occasionally, back when I was commuting from Welwyn Garden City into New Cross for college I would have to change at Finsbury Park (although looking at the map I can't remember why) and I remember there being balloons on the platforms.

Time to see if my memory is failing me...

Finsbury Park is indeed the pastel disco station, or at least it is if you come in on the Piccadilly. In contrast the Victoria Line platforms are terribly drab. Pity the Victoria Line, it must feel such a poor relation when the Piccadilly Line Platforms look like they were decorated by the Circe Du Soleil. There are indeed huge, glittering mosaic balloons - I run between both North and South platforms to get pictures of them all, each different and spectacular. I think manical cackling might have been involved.

The doors frames are mosaiced too, so as the only people on the station are grumpy and in a hurry, I get the shot of me with the station ident in the fish eye mirror. Yes, am there...that triangular black smudge...that's me...

Upstairs, the station building is a squat ugly thing, it hides it's prettiness beneath a concrete bunker; like wearing fine French lingerie under a boiler suit. It's grey and overcast above...there are various squat little shops, but all is a little dismal. I look for someone to bother for the picture and chance upon a pair of chaps making diary plans.

I make my introduction and the chap I've picked on not only agrees, but says 'would you like to hold my badge for the photo' . Joy!!! He's a revenue inspector! The badge is very US cop...'step away from the gap, sister'...I am delighted. He probably thinks I'm insane but I trundle on my merry way a happy bunny after this encounter.

I arrive back at KX, via the Victoria this time as it's a few stations shorter, exactly on time.

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cybermuppet
2007-01-13 02:27 pm UTC (link)

Whilst the mosaics are great, the rest of the station is dismal (it's my local station, so I use it every day). The mainline rail station upstairs is pretty bad too.
There are big redevelopment plans afoot for the station, which will most likely result in it being wheelchair accessible, and provide enough capacity for peak periods (just before and after Arsenal matches being the obvious examples. It also gets really busy at peak time as there are 3 or 4 feeder bus routes from areas not well served by the underground that kick off masses of passengers here. It's apparently the busiest interchange station outside of central London.

This can only means the wholesale demolition of much of the old station (and no bad thing!)

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	tubewhore 2007-01-13 02:57 pm UTC (link)
	oh, you're right - the rest is dismal. I was surprised at the contrast given the amount of work spent on the mosiacs. Poor Victoria line - so grim after the mosiac stuff... I will use some of the patterns for fabric printing designs - candy pink stripes and black and white checks lend themselves to goth lolita outfits for summer... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

cybermuppet
2007-01-13 09:48 pm UTC (link)

The Victoria line has to have been the nadir of design and aesthetics on London Underground.

There was a vague attempt to provide a unified internal design to station platforms, and some parts of the stations - they were all decorated in blue/battleship grey tiles, and each had a suitable motif in the tile-work..

No such luck with the Architecture - it's dismal and looks as thought it was done on the cheap (to be fair it probably was).
Highbury & Islington, Tottenham Hale and Pimlico spring to mind as examples of stations with appear to have been designed in the best communist tradition for utility rather than form. They have absolutely no redeeming features as far as I can tell.

From a technical point of view however, the line faired rather better: It pioneered the use of Automatic Train Operation (ATO). This helps in making it a seriously fast line.

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