A report on London travel blog London Reconnections reveals that plans to re-open Maiden Lane station, which closed over 90 years ago, are in a preliminary stage. Sitting snugly between Camden Road and Caledonian Road & Barnsbury on the North London branch of London Overground, the station closed in 1917 due to low passenger numbers, yet recent development around York Road may justify its resurrection. A pipe dream, perhaps, given the extent of current......

Maintenance workers for Tube Lines are planning a series of strikes for higher wages. The maintenance workers are concerned by the 4.95% pay rise they were offered over the next two years, given that those employed by Metronet are getting a better deal. Two 72-hour strikes are planned to start on the 20th (next Wednesday) and 3 September, both at noon. Expect complications on the Northern, Jubilee, and Piccadilly lines. Meanwhile, the Tube cleaners network-wide......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 3rd March 1982: The Barbican Centre is opened by the Queen. After 15 years of construction, at a cost of £161 million, the centre would become the largest performing arts centre in Europe (as well as being voted the ugliest building in London). Tuesday – 4th March 1882: Britain’s first electric trams go into operation in Leytonstone, East London. Wednesday – 5th March 1856: The second Covent......

The world’s busiest international airport is also the world’s least favourite. Delays on the tarmac and in the terminals have led a survey of 2,500 travellers to vote Heathrow as their least favourite airport. The airport, currently operating beyond its intended capacity, has been slowed down by increased security checks and had kept passengers waiting for their baggage, and passengers have also complained that their luggage frequently goes missing. The BAA, who own Heathrow,......

...Arsenal will even throw in a football match for free! Seriously, though, tonight represents an excellent opportunity for those who can't normally get a ticket to watch Arsene's finest, but would love to have a butcher's around their new stadium and didn't fancy forking out over £50 to watch Portugal beat Brazil the other week. Arsenal host Cardiff City tonight in an FA Youth Cup quarter final which might typically have been held at......

It might have been Be Nice To Transport Workers Day yesterday, but this morning will bring lots of abuse and ill-will. What hell trying to get into work today. Nearly every Tube and overland route is experiencing severe delays, thanks to the sprinkling of white we received overnight. Or is it? Reader Will Plant sent us this image of the real-time update boards for the Tube. Everything is experiencing problems, but the Piccadilly Line......

This Day In London’s History 1890: Public opening of the world’s first ‘deep-level’ electric tube line, running between Stockwell and King William Street. Although the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways had opened several underground tube lines since 1863, these were relatively shallow ‘cut-and-cover’-type lines. Following advances in tunnelling techniques later in the century, it became possible to construct much deeper lines, and the City & South London Railway was opened to the public on......

Everyone's favourite means of getting from Cockfosters to Heathrow reached its centenary today. The Piccadilly Line celebrated 100 years of operation in an all-expenses spared orgy of hedonism: LU managing director Tim O'Toole was at Leicester Square station and presented staff with a birthday card and a specially-designed cake. Apparently, drivers were on hand to help light the candles - putting their talents for striking and blowing out to good practice. As usual, Diamond......

If like us you were wondering why the tube was screwed last night then the answer isn't pretty: Three men have been arrested after a man died in a collision with a London Underground train. Two men, aged 25 and 17, fell on to the track from the eastbound platform of the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground at Earls Court station at 4.10pm yesterday. The 25-year-old was killed and the 17-year-old was seriously......

6 men (well five men and a 17-year-old) appeared in court today charged with offences relating to the recruitment and training of terrorists. An enquiry has been launched to find out why 900 people were trapped on the Piccadilly Line for up to two and half hours on Tuesday night after a woman jumped in front of a train at Hyde Park Corner. Thames Water are building a huge new £1bn reservoir near Abingdon.......

Attention all budding Charles Holdens. Platform for Art, in association with the V&A are holding a competition to design the Piccadilly Line station of the future. Anyone can enter: children, adults with no previous engineering experience…even Multiplex. OK, so the winning designs won’t actually be built. But your work will be displayed in poster form, as part of the Piccadilly’s centenary celebrations. Naturally, we’ll be entering an improved reworking of Cockfosters, with predictable yet......

Reports are coming in tonight of several problems on the Tube network caused by this afternoons storms. Most seriously, 600 people have been safely evacuated from a Piccadilly Line train, after a landslide caused 'four tonnes of debris' to land on the tracks. The train hit the pile, but no injuries were reported. Needless to say, service is partly suspended on this line - between Northfields and Heathrow. Meanwhile, the District Line is suspended......

We've been on at Will Luke, cricketing aficionado and all-round good egg, to write something for us for ages, ever since we spoke to him ahead of the last test of THAT Ashes series. Finally, he's relented, and given us a little snippet on where best to catch the sound of willow upon leather this summer. If you like what you read, please push the 'recommend' button and we can thus continue to pester......

Charles Holden (1875-1960) is a man with two careers. On the one hand, he gave us impressive Portland stone giants like the Senate House and 55 Broadway – two of London’s tallest buildings in their day. But the same chap also masterminded the design of 20 or so tube stations – those elegant brown brick affairs best seen on the northern stretch of the Piccadilly Line. These in particular show off Holden’s principles of......

After the Evening Standard’s successful campaign (beware of link, several facts wrong, naturally) to reduce the size of a preposterous Holborn box junction, TfL have moved matters indoors. The blighters have now started painting box junctions on station platforms, as these Piccadilly Line markings testify. Note the chap entering the box when the way ahead is patently not clear (Londonist plus mates are standing there with a camera). According to Rule 150 of the......

This day in London’s history Is this the dullest date ever in London’s history? The best we can come up with is the completion, in 1807, of some new docks in Rotherhithe. Oh, and Southgate and Enfield West opened on the Piccadilly Line in 1933. Plus some kind of fracas over at the LSE in 1967. Otherwise, March 13 is a day of meager excitement in the capital’s calendar. Unless you can find anything......

This day in London’s History 1542: Tower Hill. Kathryn Howard, or Cat Tudor to her friends, has an unfortunate encounter with an axe. After the execution, Henry VIII was heard to whisper unto Thomas Cranmer: ‘Well, that’ll save me a Guinea down at Thorntons. Christ’s beard, they don’t half mark-up their prices for Valentine’s Day’. London fact of the week If you walk down the long, musty passage between the Jubilee and Piccadilly Line......

Arsenal, on the Piccadilly Line: a tube station named after a football team, which is named after an area of South-East London, which is called after an ammunition storage facility. Something of an identity crises, one might say. Well, things are about to come to a head. Now that the sun is setting on Arsenal FC’s Highbury era, there are calls for the nearby Tube Station to revert to its former name, Gillespie Road.......

Yesterday we introduced you to Tom Marlow and Gavin White, two very insane brave and imaginative souls who decided last year that it would be a good idea to cycle to every Underground station in London (including the disused and abandoned ones) as well as swim in every outdoor and unheated pool, pond and lido in the capital to boot. When we left them yesterday they'd just stopped for a well-deserved chicken burger at......

Yes, this is hopefully the last of these posts we'll have to write, as the Piccadilly Line resumes service (albeit a rather limited one) today (four weeks exactly after the bombings at Edgware Road, Russell Square and Aldgate). According to the Beeb "The Piccadilly Line has reopened fully meaning all stations on the Tube network are now being served." Well, whatever reasons Transport for London may have given us to grumble in the past,......

At 5:05am this morning Edgware Road station opened for the first time since July 7. Although there were apparently just two commuters on the 7.05 District line train from Edgware Road to Wimbledon this morning. As for the other effected lines, the Piccadilly Line still has no service between Hyde Park Corner Station and Arnos Grove Station in both directions and the Circle Line is still suspended.......

A quick rundown of all the latest news stories connected to the London bombings: As you've probably read by now Pakistan security forces have arrested a British Muslim in connection with the bombings. This was part of a sweep of arrests across the country during which at least 25 people were detained. In connection with this the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will make an address on Thursday explaining the government's "crackdown on Islamic militants".......

According to statistics released today the Northern Line is Godawful. Why? Well, it's the only line on the entire sytem to have actually got worse in the past year. Tube Lines (who seem to have spent most of their budget creating pointless Flash animations for their website) failed to hit performance targets in all four quarters for the Northern Line, and to top it off, Transco also underperformed when it came to "cleanliness, graffiti......

If you're still at work and you're planning to get home via the tube then you might want to rethink (as of 6:30 this evening): There are 'severe delays' on most of the major lines this evening due to a power outage: The East London Line has no service in both directions and the following lines are badly delayed: Circle, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly Line and Metropolitan. The following stations have been closed due to......

The London Underground and the Good Lord aren't normally to found in the same context, but this story from today's papers manages to combine the two. This week, Mike Challis, general manager for the Piccadilly Line received an envelope containing £400 in fifty pound notes. Quickly dismissing the idea that TfL had decided to deliver this year's track maintenance budget by post, Mike read the accompanying letter, composed by a repentant fare dodger who......

You don't get much for free in London... maybe the occasional bag of crisps or can of coke at Victoria station if there's a promotion of some kind going on or the Standard Lite if you need something to clean your shoe with after treading in something nasty... Come the first of May though and you can head to Covent Garden and the South Bank for free human contact: free hugs to be exact.......