Hoxton station has a new platform, a new online platform that is, a prototype accessibility portal with key information accessed on your smartphone. I haven't seen a press release about it but I have seen a poster in the ticket hall while passing through the station.
It's only accessible via QR code so it's not that accessible, but I clicked through and discovered the URL is vin.cloud.gomedia.io/HOXTON so you can check it out too. The homescreen is a list of the next three departures and their expected departure times, with a link (top right) to an animated gentleman announcing the next departure in British Sign Language! Clever, thoughtful and potentially so useful. One more click takes you to a list of calling points or a list of All Departures over the next three hours (Hi People Running The Trial, it'd be more customer friendly to delete the railway suffixes, we don't need to know it's "Highbury And Islington Ell", "Whitechapel LT" or "Clapham Junction Plats 0-2"). Another click leads to a comprehensive simple list of Station facilities.
Another accessibility tab designed to be of particular use to the hard of hearing is a list of all the station announcements at Hoxton over the last hour. And that's a lot of announcements - I counted 70 in an hour last night - including next trains, approaching trains, cancelled trains and safety messages. If you've ever wondered how often they play that bloody See It Say It Sorted message, at Hoxton it appears to be about every 10 minutes. I've not seen this trial advertised at any other Overground stations BUT by tweaking the URL I've discovered they're doing something similar at Wapping and Anerley, (but not at Haggerston, Rotherhithe or Brockley). It may be worth keeping an eye on because, hey, we can never have too many accessibility tools.
Update: full details of the 'Luna' BSL project here. Also at Hackney Central, Hackney Downs, Upper Holloway and Willesden Junction.
More Overground news
As the renaming of the Overground lines approaches, TfL are running a creative competition whereby your work could appear at Overground stations later in the year. You have to write a poem or produce a poster based on "how the new line names inspire you", and how old you are decides which line you have to tackle. The under 7s get to do the Lioness, 10-13 years olds are Windrushing and 18-21 year olds are tasked with Weaver. For most of my readership, being over 21, it's Mildmay or bust. Full details here.
On the same day TfL launched a second series of their Mind The Gap podcast, again Overground-naming-fixated. It's a six-parter introduced by Tim Dunn, although so far they've only released the Mildmay episode. You can find it where you normally find your podcasts (or if that means nothing to you, here). I'm intrigued that TfL announced both of these on a Tuesday in July, as if part of a planned pre-launch publicity programme, so my hunch is that these mark the Two Months To Go touchpoint in which case you can expect to see six new line names on Monday 16th September.
Electric rail news
GWR are testing a battery-operated electric train on the Greenford branch line - former District line D Stock over-optimistically upgraded by now-defunct Vivarail. One dark-hued Class 230 train is shuttling back and forth occasionally to check it could operate successfully between chargings, but not with passengers on board, only GWR staff and gizmo-twiddling engineers. I think these trials started back in March so this isn't exactly news but it's the first time I've seen it operating (at West Ealing, slotted halfway between the usual scheduled diesel services) and woohoo I even shot a brief video.
TfL news
Often when people go on holiday they take a thick blockbuster to read, maybe a Jilly Cooper, maybe a James Patterson. But if you're of a transport bent why not grab a digital copy of the papers for the latest TfL board meeting and stash those on your tablet instead? It's 620 pages long, and OK a lot of that is tedious financial stuff but it includes a 32 page Commissioner's report, 100 pages of TfL's Annual report, 60 pages of Health and Safety review and a 128 page Transport Strategy, and by the time you've read that you'll know everything about what TfL did last year and what they intend to do in the future.
Dangleway news
The cablecar is being circus-themed over the school summer holidays with acrobats and jugglers occasionally present to entertain passengers while they wait. My condolences to TfL's press officers who lovingly crafted a press release entitled A summer at the circus is underway at the IFS Cloud Cable Car and which so far has only been publicised by First Group plc and a tiny independent radio station based in Shooters Hill. Sorry guys, nobody's interested any more.
Brandfroth news
TfL have done that station renaming thing again because a multi-national company promised to give them lots of money and they couldn't say no. It's only for a few days and although it's in zone 1 it's not in proper central London so you're unlikely to have seen it. As usual the sponsor looked for a station where one word was similar to their brand name and then unwisely ran with it. This included changing the name out front, filling ad frames around the station with a rebranded roundel, slapping vinyls on the stair treads, sticking a special cover on the day's edition of Metro, dishing out product-shaped leaflets, commandeering all the local billboards and commissioning four works of art. It was all a bit much really, and I suspect the sponsor got rather less publicity than they hoped for. I'm not going to help them, sorry.
The brand ambassadors standing beside three of the works of art looked pretty bored, given nobody was stopping. The fourth work was placed half a mile away where nobody would find it, apart from the press photographers who ensured it appeared in all the newspapers rather than the renamed station. The sponsors had also roped in eight local businesses across the local area in a kind of treasure hunt but nobody seemed particularly interested in those either. The response on social media was angry rather than celebratory ("Cringe" "Please stop this nonsense" "Did you learn NOTHING from Burberry Street?!") although those moaning that the station would be unidentifiable to tourists plainly hadn't been on the platform where it remained very obvious.
I fear TfL's Brand Froth team will be only too keen to do this again sometime somewhere else, but I love that the sponsorship tide has turned and the public basically isn't interested any more.
