On the 19th March 2022, I had tickets booked for the tour of the disused parts of Moorgate station, organised by the London Transport Museum. I had arranged to meet my friend Martin at West Ruislip and go there together. As I had to travel to London, I had already booked my train tickets, my overnight bag and I was super excited to be going!
During the day of the 18th March, an email came through to say that it had to be cancelled owing to staff shortage/illness. As you can imagine, this very excited person was disappointed, but as the train tickets were booked and not refundable, we decided between us to make the most of the opportunity that we had to go exploring other parts of the network.
I arrived at West Ruislip armed with a plan and we agreed a route to go exploring. If you would rather watch a YouTube video, than read on, here is a link to my video of the day.
In short, we went from West Ruislip to Ruislip Gardens, then walked up to see Ruislip Depot (or as much as we could from the service road), then went to White City, with a walk pass the TV studios on our way to Wood Lane.
We saw the roundel at Wood Lane, which is a mosaic one from the original Wood Lane station (see this video). Then went to Hammersmith (Hammersmith & City / Circle) and across the road to Hammersmith (Piccadilly and District). From there we went to Barons Court to see the green tiles in the booking Hall, then to St. James's Park to see 55 Broadway, then to Monument.
We had planned to get the DLR at Bank and go to Shadwell, but there was engineering works going on, so we had a walk to Tower Gateway, then the DLR to Shadwell with a walk to the Overground, where we went underground!
With a quick ride to Rotherhithe to say that we had ridden the Thames Tunnel, we had a ride out to Gants Hill to see the station from above and below ground. Then a ride on the 'Hainault Loop' and back to Liverpool Street with a connection to Moorgate, where we had a little wonder around, before going to see the long escalator and widened platform at Angel and then move on to find the abandoned Highgate (High Level). From there we went to Euston to see the old C&SLR building before it is demolished as part of HS2.
A quick change of lines and up to St. Johns Wood to see the Brass uplighters on the escalators and then down to Piccadilly Circus to see the north end of the Bakerloo line, where you can see both platforms at the same time. From here, we went our own ways and Martin went home on the Underground and I went to Marylebone for a Chiltern Railways service back home. So even though the tour didn't go ahead, we had a great time exploring places that we hadn't been to before. I did take my little "Tube Station Trivia" book by Geoff Marshall (available from most book retailers), which was a great to have and read as we went through stations.
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