62. The Scariest Urban Legend Urban legends are often considered myths, or 'friend of a friend' tales (FOAFtales), which differ from classic mysteries in the sense that they are perceived as exaggerated yarns. London has many such tales from its dark, foggy corners, but there is one such story which has become criminally forgotten, and for me remains one of the capital's most horrifying legends – namely 'The Maniac On The Platform' first discussed......

Heads up people: the East London Line closes this Saturday. It will undergo a magical transformation that will take rather a long time but the line will reemerge from a 3 year chrysalis as a beautiful section of the newly tangerine London Overground network, linking the North and East London railways. You'll eventually be able to travel from Richmond in the West all the way round in a massive arterial horseshoe via the existing......

Londonist went on a sojourn to Manchester recently, and loved the place. Home of iconic bands, incessant rain, pretty canals, and some of Britain's most interesting modern architecture outside London, Manchester has a lot to offer. If only there were a way to get there that didn't involve spending half your life savings on an overpriced, inflexible rail ticket. Never let it be said that Virgin Trains can't spot an opening in the market.......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 29. Bystander Eageration… After being made redundant the other week, I was offered some work by a friend who runs a market stall selling Christmas gifts. It’s chilly work but my silly dance moves to keep warm have amused the customers, and their weird behaviour has kept me very interested in them. Weirdly, the less......

As another rock'n'roll revivalist spectacular pulls in the press, Londonist, once again, finds itself on the other side of town. Okkervil River are playing the last show in 3 months of solid touring and open tonight's proceedings by toasting the audience. It is at precisely this point that the references we have from shiny silver disc: lyrically dark, yet often beautiful, occasionally expansive US indie alt-county rock, get drop-kicked through the plate-glass window of......

Olympic budget continues to be a source of confusion if not merriment. The RMT plays about with figures: fly to the Caribbean or train it from London to Scotland – you tell us which is cheaper?! Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre sees a charity screening of a film in aid of 7/7 memorial fund. The Met has appointed a new counter terrorism chief. 2012 building piccie courtesy of diamond geezer’s flickr photo stream.......

That's right. As from today, King's Cross Thameslink is no more. The outmoded station on Pentonville Road closed for business yesterday. Services now stop beneath St Pancras International on new platforms (pictured). It seems to be the law these days that anything recently opened must be trumpeted as 'shiny new'. Not so with these platforms. IanVisits describes a 'clinical grey feel', but with much widened access. Diamond Geezer, meanwhile, gives a fitting eulogy to......

Dusting off the snow from last year, every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... Look up when you're next out and about in London - you'll see things you hadn't noticed......

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits......

Ann Widdecombe MP was arrested outside the Houses of Parliament yesterday and taken to the Clink Prison where bail was set at £35,000. The fact that she was already wearing prison uniform when she got nicked hinted at the possibility that this was a charitable stunt rather than a tabloid-topping shocker, fall from grace thriller of a crime story. Widdecombe was participating in the Jailbreak campaign to raise cash for Guide Dogs for the......

It happens at the worst of times, always. You'll be in that changing room of Topshop, jeans straddled around your hips, or on that tube platform, waiting for a train with a requisite five minute delay and then it strikes you - the urge to pee. Out of your comfort zone (the zone of knowing where the nearest cubicle is), the fear magnifies tenfold. You could surreptitiously enter that local restaurant, and negotiate the humiliation......

Kerching! Tour de France raked in £120m and we want it back again but even better! Winehouse wisely bails on gigs while Blake's in the slammer Awards aplenty for London's star studded Theatreland The usual seasonal non-shocker: train fares set to rise Image courtesy of tezzer57 via the Londonist flickr group.......

The trains have been re-routed, the signage amended, the tube announcements re-recorded (completed, luckily, before the woman behind them was given the heave-ho). The re-opening of St Pancras means that Waterloo's reign as Britain's main international train station, a duty it fulfilled without complaint for thirteen years, is well and truly over. But what to do with those elegant Eurostar platforms, so admired in their mid-Nineties infancy? The plan in the short term is......

Curious and curiouser: we got a tip-off from a mysterious source that the District Line had a distinct lack of advertising over the weekend. Could this have anything to do with Buy Nothing Day, which took place on Saturday? Those baffling adverts coyly suggesting you need more fibre in your diet - or maybe it's oestrogen or hair that you're lacking - all seemed to have disappeared, leaving the carriages refreshingly blank and clear.......

And so, for the next instalment of the Mayor's Indian Adventure. Day 4: Ken takes the train. Yes, our man of the people took a train from one side of Mumbai to the other and was captured smiling winsomely by a camera phone. As the local paper mused: Perhaps he had business on his mind or perhaps he was marvelling at Mumbai's suburban railway system built and operated by the British in the days......

Time Out recently presented St Pancras Station as their inaugural 'Wonder of London'. Profile Books goes a couple of stages further by including the terminus in its 'wonders of the world' series - buildings and monuments, such as the Colosseum, Stonehenge and the Forbidden City, whose 'names will be familiar to almost everyone'. We're not sure if the station is quite in that category yet. It's doubtful it has anything like the global and......

Unless there were leaves on the line, not enough station staff, delays at Paris holding everything up or industrial action on either side of the Channel, the first Eurostar train should be pulling into its new station at St Pancras this morning. We've had a sneak preview of what it's like and have been terribly excited about it so far, and at last, today, we get to see it in its full glory. We......

News of a film installation to be unveiled at Rayners Lane and Sudbury Town stations shortly alerted us to the fact that TfL's jolly and diverse Platform for Art programme had undergone a rebrand and will be relaunching as Art on the Underground at the end of this month. There's not much in a name, of course, but always fans of wordplay and puns we rather liked "Platform for Art". However, TfL has opted......

Due to earlier technical vexations of a non-Stratford-related variety, Monday Miscellanea is a bit later than usual today... This Week In London’s History Monday – 12th November 1974: A 9lb salmon is caught in the Thames – the first time that such a fish has been caught in the dirty old river since 1834 – and sent to the British Museum for identification. Improvements in the water quality are hailed. Tuesday – 13th November......

London Overground (LO) begins operations today. The new service takes over where Silverlink left off (we'll leave you to decide which particular circle of Hell that is). The stations and trains are now owned by Transport for London, with services operated by London Overground Rail Operations Limited. Practically speaking, this translates as follows: - Oyster cards now work on the benighted routes. - The Tube map has a new look. - All stations staffed......

26. Going Underground Urban legends of the more sinister variety have always intrigued me, so continuous whispers and friend-of-a-friend tales concerning a mutant race of beings inhabiting the dark tunnel systems, sewers and subterranean passages beneath the capital are always welcome, even if unfounded (despite rumours circulating as far back as the nineteenth century). However, one thing us folklorists do know is that the underbelly of the city is teeming with all manner of......

If the daily freesheets just aren’t filling that void in your commute, perhaps something a bit more creative will suit you better. Notes From The Underground, a new free paper, will be launched 17 December at 30 commuter hot spots. The tabloid-size literary magazine will be hand distributed, and showcase short stories, non-fiction and illustrations. If you accidentally dodge the NFTU guy while evading London Lite/Paper distributors, you can pick the litmag up at libraries,......

This Sunday TfL take over the North London Line. Yes, the service also known as the loony line and infamous for fare dodging and criminal activity on unmanned stations is getting a rebrand. Goodbye (good riddance) Silverlink! Hello London Overground. The long neglected, feared and cursed service that links Stratford with North London and pootles all the way around the West to Richmond is being brought into the TfL fold. It's even getting coloured......

With the opening of St Pancras and its high-speed line to the continent, the approval of Crossrail, and glimpses of the futuristic bullet trains that will soon call London home, there are plenty of encouraging signs that Britain's rail network is in good health. They don't come much more inspiring than the former railway man who has set up his own rail service. Grand Central Rail was established in 2000 by former British Rail......

Go through Stratford Station one evening between now and Saturday 10 November, look up above the ticket barriers and you'll see rows of faces scanning the crowds, each face topped with a pair of headphones. This is the audience for Small Metal Objects by Back To Back Theatre, a site specific performance in the Barbican's Ozmosis festival of contemporary Australian performance. You can see them but they can't see the actors. You can't hear......

Londonist got the big scoop of the week with what may be the first images of notorious street artist Banksy in action. They also got on a runaway train without an operator provoking a response from the transport authorities. Elsewhere, London's answer to Central Station is about to open for business, and Londonist got a sneak preview. Meanwhile, spooky goings-on beneath London Bridge, where a cache of skeletons provided an apt story for Hallowe'en.......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 23. A little bit of niceness It’s nearly a year since the Niceties Token campaign began, so I wanted to talk a little bit about it. A Niceties Token is a small Fimo clay object with ‘niceties-token.com’ written on one side and a name on the other. There are now about 1,500 of these tokens......

Congestion charge leads to rise in stolen and counterfeit number plates. New study into aircraft noise finds that people don't really like it. Keats house being restored. When the pinkie breaks: Led Zeppelin reunion delayed thanks to a broken finger. Jimmy Page presumably wearing a whole lotta glove. Woman's head hit by train while leaning over platform to be sick. Another stunning image courtesy of Homemade via the Londonist flickr group.......

The nice people from Docklands Light Rail have contacted us to respond to our report from a couple of days ago of an unintentionally unmanned DLR train carrying passengers between stations. Here's what they had to say: The Docklands Light Railway can confirm that on 30 October 2007, at approximately 09:45hrs a train in passenger service departed West India Quay platform 4 without a staff member on board. The train continued to Westferry platform 2......

Updates from a Londonista at today's Integrated Volume Testing at St Pancras International, the new Eurostar terminal. (A sneak preview of the new station before it opens on 14th November, with Eurostar moving from Waterloo overnight.) 7.15am. Early start, ugh. 8.00. It's quite a privilege to be here and get a sneak preview of the place. But they'd better have coffee. 8.30. The first queue of many - most of the participants (300 of......