notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Tube upgrade chart 2011 (by Darren)

I quite like this graph of the various upgrade programmes.

The Tube map’s depiction of the East London Line’s extension to Highbury and Islington, which opened today. There’s pictures and analysis at Londonist. As they put it, “not good news for those who favour a less cluttered approach”.

London Transport - Arsenal station design sketches, August 1930 (by Mikey):

A sketch from the offices London Transport Architects illustrating the proposed reconstruction of the facade of Arsenal station in 1933. This swept away the 1906 Leslie Green facade and delivered this uncompromising ‘moderne’ elevation that largely survives to this day. Given the huge LT roundel on the facade and the two cantilevered versions there’s no doubting it is a tube station!

See also: Holborn station reconstruction sketches, 1933 (by the same uploader).

A double-page spread from Railways Under London by Marie Neurath, one of the key exponents of the Isotype Picture Language, as seen at The Science Project: Isotype workshop.

There’s an exhibition about the work on Isotype at the V&A. It’s small but, if you’re in or near London, well worth a visit.

London Underground tube map, c1911 (by Mikey Ashworth, via diamond geezer).

One of the most interesting things, to me, is how much of the central network was in place by this point. The only tube lines built inside the Circle are the Victoria and Jubilee lines.

It’s definitely worth clicking through for the uploader’s notes on the style and the inclusion of the Brighton Railway’s Elevated Electric services, and for his set of Underground maps, including MacDonald’s Gills minimal/calligraphic sketch map.

Looking up at a building’s foundations and the street above:

Foundations for larger buildings are generally adaptations or combinations of the four types used at our intersection. One is on a floating foundation, another on friction piles, a third on bearing piles, and the fourth on piers.

From David Macualay’s Underground, via Things Magazine.

Crossrail - Liverpool Street Station design

A 3D diagram of the Crossrail routing under Liverpool Street (and, given the length of the platforms, Moorgate and Finsbury Circus too). Note the Post Office railway tunnel.

This photo is from Tokyo Compression, a new book by Michael Wolf. I became aware of it from an article in the Guardian, but the photo above is from a German article (via). As Justin McCurry writes,

it is the ability to tolerate an elbow in the back and a cheek unceremoniously pasted against a window that sets Tokyo’s commuters apart. There are few arguments, and fights are almost unheard of; it’s as if the powerless, massed ranks of the travelling public have entered into a non-aggression pact – and one that is observed, for the most part, in near silence.

Winding up next to the Guardian article in Instapaper was a great post by 3 Quarks Daily entitled Tokyo, Almost-encouters, and “Passing by”:

Everyday, 3.55 million passengers are sent round and round Tokyo in a dizzying twenty-one mile subway loop called the Yamanote Line. The entire New York City Subway System, by comparison, spreads its 5.5 million daily  riders out over thirty-two times as much track.

At each of its twenty-six stops, passengers don’t exactly pass-through the ticket-gates, instead, they are pressed-out in batches, like loaves of bread through a bread-slicer. When you step onto this thronged train-line in the morning, it’s safe to assume that by day’s end, dozens upon dozens of friends, colleagues, past lovers, and future muses, will have passed through the same small square inches of this immense city.