Buses up North

Those "recycled 1970s buses" (actually built in the 1980s) up North are soon to be replaced by nice new diesel and electric trains - and unlike Crossrail, they are still scheduled for later this year.

My 345 experience.

I'd been intending not to try out a 345 until I could combine it with a ride through the Crossrail tunnels, but the co-incidence of the postponement news arriving on the same day as my Freedom Pass made me decide perhaps I'd better not wait that long - and I had to try my pass out somewhere.

As for the train - I'm glad I was only going from Stratford to Liverpool Street: seat backs too high, and too hard.

Class 345

The 345s are already operating Liverpool Street to Shenfield. But when the line through the core opens they will go via Whitechapel instead of direct, so the journey time between Stratford and Liverpool Street will increase.

Toilets on trains

There is a difference between a toilet (or any other facility) not working in a train where one is expected (in which case reasonable adjustments should be made, such as having the train wait at a "convenient" station) and there being no toilets provided in the first place.

Water fountains

The patchiness of the mayor's scheme may be because of local initiatives. Kingston Borough Council is installing its own water fountains, so it will not be necessary for the local inhabitants to trek over to Acton Park to replenish their water bottles.

Pink readers

The pink readers are at places you might change trains on an orbital route - such as Gunnersbury if travelling via Turnham Green and South Acton. But you would never need to change trains at Kew Gardens.

Bedford Park

Half of the Bedford Park Conservation Area, including Abinger Road, is in the London Borough of Hounslow.

Westminster

How many people realise that the Royal Albert Hall and most of Imperial College, not to mention Kensington Gore and Kensington Gardens, are not actually in Kensington at all?

Lines of latitude

Lines of longitude get closer together as you approach the poles: lines of latitude are parallel.

The metre was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator, so one degree of latitude equates to 10,000,000/90 metres or 111.111 km.

If you prefer imperial measure, the nautical mile is defined as 1 minute of arc (1/60 degree), so 1 degree is 60 nautical miles.

Both figures approximate, as the Earth is not a perfect sphere.

Central London bus cuts

Cutting the 59 back to Euston means there will once again be no direct link (by bus OR Tube) between the country's busiest railway station and the Eurostar terminal.

The truncation of the 4 and 172 halves the number of bus routes (and therefore buses?) between Waterloo and the City - again an axis poorly served by the Tube. Still no buses on the direct route from Waterloo to the City via Blackfriars Bridge though.

I'm not sure this is the end for Fetter Lane as a bus route - the logical route if not going via Grays Inn Road is via Holborn Circus, not Ludgate Circus.

As for truncating the 172 at Aldwych, they usually do that anyway (leaving passengers from Waterloo further from the City than when they boarded), so no real change there.

The 40 is to be diverted over Blackfriars Bridge to replace the 45 and 388.

Waterloo Eurostar platforms

Platform 20 at Waterloo is used quite often. The other Eurostar platforms have seen use during the works which closed platforms 1-6 last summer, and also for diverted services from South Eastern during the last stages of the Thameslink project at London Bridge.

They are supposed to be being readied for the new more frequent timetable in December, except that isn't going to happen now because no-one checked whether the electricity supply was up to the job of powering the extra trains.

The 51.5th parallel

One street over from where it leaves Southwark for Lambeth, the 51.5th parallel passes 50 metres south of the geometric centre of Greater London.

LDDC

The LDDC (London Docklands Development Corporation, 1981-1998) is not the LLDC (London Legacy Development Corporation 2012 - date).

North Woolwich

From 1889 to 1965 North Woolwich was an exclave of the County of London, not Kent.

GWR

The GWR, like most companies to the north and west of London, were not very interested in commuter traffic - they had bigger fish to fry, such as freight (coal in particular) and long-distance express services.

Railway companies operating to he south (and east) of London had no coal traffic and their scope for long-distance services was limited by the proximity of the coast, so they were always more inclined to cultivate their commuter markets. Direct trains to London from a widely spread network were possible in the south - the GWR found it was a better use of track capacity to serve several branches from one main line train by providing connections.

Remember also that the original GWR was designed by Brunel to go from London to Bristol by the most direct route possible. Places like Windsor, Marlow, Henley and Oxford, which could have been served relatively easily, were spurned and found themselves only later connected to the main line by shuttles. (Doubtless the same fate could have befallen Reading and Bath if Brunel's preferred route hadn't passed through those towns)

51.5°N

What a coincidence that both the mouth of the Thames and the mouth of the (Bristol) Avon are at 51.5N

High-numbered London streets

On the Hertford Road, house numbers go up to just short of 1000. The parallel Great Cambridge Road gets well into the 1100s. There are several others as well - e.g Eastern Avenue London Road (Norbury), North Circular Road (Staples Corner).

Skyfall

The Tube train in "Skyfall" was a Jubilee Line train, not a Central, and was filmed in the disused platforms at Charing Cross.