I understand they let the engine drivers grow moustaches so that they could filter out the smoke before it hit their lungs.

Tube signs that make you smile - mind the gap!

I must visit Shepherds Pie sometime

http://tinyurl.com/d5bveu2

Still a marvel and looking pretty good for 150. The Tube is still one of the London Icons for good or bad.

We were at the London Transport Museum at Covent Garden on Saturday - they've got some interesting stuff about the history of the tube.

As much as I love the tube, sometimes it is just quicker to walk. Here's a link to a map that I've sent to visitors a few times showing which stations (mostly in central London) that it's actually quicker and easier to walk to, than take the tube;

http://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/2003/10/london_tube_map.html

May come in handy...

Sofarsogood; that is so funny!

The 150th anniversary merits a Fodors round of the best London underground game ever - Mornington Crescent. I'll start.

Mile End

Theydon Bois (well, it is Thursday).

"the best London underground game ever "

But which rule book?

When the game took off under the benign dictatorship of Humph, transport systems knew their place. There was the Tube, British Railways, the Drain ("London Underground tickets are not valid beyond this point") and they all knew their place and stuck to it.

Click on today's so-called Tube map and the system's been landgrabbing practically like 1940's Germany (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.pdf).

Not just stations in outlandish places like Terminal 5. But it's annexed half the London train system and called it the Overground. Invented something called the Emirates Airline (no doubt one of Fuhrer Boris' miracle weapons), with a station at "Emirates Greenwich Peninsula". Occupied the once proudly independent Drain and downgraded it to just another Tube line.

And colonised the virgin territories in the East, with an entire new system, calling at Mudchute, Galleons Reach and Cyprus.

Without any public discussion, power-mad Boris and Ken have doubled the number of stations since Humph's heyday. It's a diabolical imposition on hard working Mornington Crescent players.

Back to the 1975 Prayerbook map I'd say. But Big Brother's expunged it from memory. Search the TFL site and there are dozens of different ways of mapping the New Tube. But not a trace of its earlier, more neighbourly, boundaries.

Thus do tyrants always rewrite history.

There's only one thing to say to that.

Balls Pond Road.

"Balls Pond Road."

But not on any tube map.

Patrick is disqualified.
The official rule book states: Please avoid all surface lines that back onto Mrs Trellis's home between 7pm and 7am on a Thursday

But she's moved, didn't you know? North Wales, I believe.

(Maps? Pshaw. It's thinking like that that lost Tobruk, you know).

If Mrs Trellis has gone to Wales, does that mean I can suggest Shepherd's Bush? Or does that not pass the 1973 cheese rule?

But I thought you were going to............

Oh, never mind. Go ahead.

Whose turn is it?

If it was already peak time, I'd say Aldwych.

Mind the Gap has been in the London vernacular 150 years now?

Apparently "Mind the Gap" and Gap Inc were both invented more or less simultaneously in 1969. Both also roughly coincide with the first known use of "gap year".

Not many people know that.

Well that is stunning news - I first went to London in 1969 and vaguely remember Mind the Gap being printed on platforms and blaring out of speakers - but it could have been a few years later.

But interesting that the now iconic "Mind the Gap" is such a recent creation.

Thanks for posting this link!

Around the late 60s is probably when they atarted using pre-recorded announcements on a regular basis. There were probably staff on the relevant platforms shouting it on their own initiative from time to time.

Gee I always thought that Mind the Gap referred to kissing a English gal!

It's a wonder you weren't locked up, PQ.