Think of the Tube, and the first image that enters your mind is the red and blue circle and bar roundel. It’s used everywhere on the trains, the maps, the tickets, the walls…
But that’s just the start of it. Dig around the Transport for London web site and you’ll come across its excellent Station Products Guide PDF (via Diamond Geezer), which specifies everything from the platform-end fences that stop you getting electrocuted, to the channels screwed onto the station ceilings to keep the cables out of the way.
It’s a mine of useless information. How else would you know that the numbers on the Underground’s digital clocks are designed for legibility at a ratio of one metre per 2mm of height, so that 10cm digits can be seen from 50m away? Or that internal station barriers are round or oval and 45mm in section so as to discourage litter and suspicious packages? Or indeed that staff sitting behind little ticket windows can pick from only six different messages for the LED boards above their heads? They’re controlled by a switch on the rear of the unit.
It’s the station managers’ equivalent of an Argos catalogue, and a real eye-opener for anyone who travels on the tube or bus each day.
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