I've been waiting for this weekend with mounting anticipation since I first heard about it in July.  Once a year, the London Transport Museum's Depot in Acton opens its door to all and sundry.  The imagination runs wild...somewhere in deepest Acton there's a warehouse stuffed with all manner of transport-related heavy machinery, equipment, street furniture, signage, posters, and any other unknown bits and bobs, scale models and sundry peculiarities that have a home nowhere else. 

It was too good to miss...and from posting about it here, it seemed I was not the only one getting excited at the idea of playing with the old trains.  However, by a joyful failure of  joined up thinking, Transport for London have scheduled engineering works that takes out the  Piccadilly Line is westbound between Hammersmith and Acton Town this weekend, meaning anyone travelling to the Depot has to figure out the bus replacement service.  Just genius...

...still even with this extra hiccup I still arrive before anyone else I'm scheduled to meet.  I queue in the drizzle with all the other enthusiasts and watch the miniature steam tube  puff up and down...


An absolutely a wonderful day - I can't wait to go again next year.  And as we discovered on the way out, there's tube signage outside, so I'm claiming this as a special bonus stop.

From Finchley Road on Sunday, we'd zoomed down the Metropolitan to Baker Street to pick up the Bakerloo over to Paddington.  On the platform was an archway - probably load bearing, or something else highly important to stop the roof falling on us, but it seemed an unnecessary portal...I like finding these odd details...naturally I walked through it, just in case it was interdimensional.

 
Again low light made taking pictures with my little camera difficult. 

In small type on the wall. Lovely burnt orange tiling...


Down the stairs to the Bakerloo line:

From Oakwood, we journey down the Piccadilly to Holborn, change to the Central eastwards to Bank where we losefailing_angel for the afternoon, as midnightxpress and myself change to the DLR to get to Custom House for the Boat Show at Excel. 

Descending to the DLR platforms, interesting signage at the entrance to the surprisingly narrow corridor downwards.  This isn't at an exit to the outside world, but deep in the bowels of the Bank Complex, or maybe the complex is so tortuous to navigate, a narrow corridor is just too tempting for full-bladdered city types.

Pinched from not_waving's post in tubestories



Love this kind of thing, even the rubbish spelling