A South Londoner's Guide to the Northern Line (Northern Line)

Member Name: NCG1

Product:	Northern Line
Date:	22/04/02 (155 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly reliable, Quick, Takes you to useful places

Disadvantages: Rush hour

Regularly travelling the full length of the Northern line (most recently, and memorably, in an ankle-length bridesmaids dress plus accompanying bits) is not my recommended way to experience the full joys of this tube line. But, together with commuting on the same line every day, it does give me some sort of perspective, especially on the Southern end.

THOSE CONFUSING BRANCHES

If you start from South London, the Northern line is less confusing. There's just one branch down there on the 'Other Side' (as my gran calls anything South of the river). Only once you reach Kennington do you have a choice. At that point, the momentous decision is City or West End? City will take you up to London Bridge and Bank (therefore called the Bank branch) and West End will take you up to Charing Cross, Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Road etc (therefore called the Charing Cross branch). Not so bad, is it.

But then it gets more complicated. The line joins once more at Camden Town (fine, I hear you say) but immediately splits again. Here the choice is Edgware or High Barnet (with a few other options that are variations on how high up you get on either branch, such as Mill Hill East or Golders Green).

The things to remember are:
- its easy to change at Kennington and at Camden Town. Don't even think about it at Euston.
- its marginally quicker to go up the Charing Cross branch than up the Bank branch (but not enough quicker to be worth waiting more than a couple of minutes for a Charing Cross train)
- its almost always best to get the first train and change. For example, there are many more Bank than Charing Cross trains from South London, but quite a few Charing Cross trains start at Kennington, so its worth going there and waiting. (There's a complicated reason for this, to do with siding/ turning arrangements for the different branches at Kennington).
- the change at Stockwell to the Victoria line is cr
oss-platform, so the best way from South London to Kings Cross/ Oxford Circus etc is to change to the Victoria line at Stockwell.

STATIONS ON THE 'OTHER SIDE'

The Northern and central London stations have already been thoroughly covered, so I thought I'd just quick a few quick highlights on the Southern ones. Any I've missed out are purely because I've never left the train there.

Kennington - major interchange point between branches. The key thing here is that the change is cross-platform if you want to carry on in the same direction, but if you want to stop going South and start going North (or vice versa) you need to go up and down staircases. Outside the tube is a pleasant residential area.

Oval - for the cricket.

Stockwell - easy change to the Victoria line for the West End (Oxford Circus for shopping) or for Brixton.

Vauxhall - sole use is an interchange with the mainline trains that come out of Waterloo on their way to Clapham Junction, which is handy but a rather long walk (leave at least 7 minutes for the change).

Claphams (North, Common and South) - sorry, much to expensive for me, never get off there.

Balham - like Clapham but marginally cheaper. Has some nice restaurants. Major attraction is the last interchange with mainline trains (the line that goes into Victoria via Clapham Junction).

Tooting Bec - bit of a wasteland in terms of shops (especially up towards Balham) but has loads of big, nice houses. Also the nearest access to Tooting Common and the Lido.

Tooting Broadway - fantastic market here (exotic fruit and veg, clothing, second-hand books, pound shops galore and fresh noodles) as well as the world's greatest collection of traffic offences.

Colliers Wood - a few small shops dying in the shade of the massive Savacentre, and totally ruined by the black, peeling monolith to Eighties office building in the centre. Lots of
cheap housing, though.

South Wimbledon - the grotty end of Wimbledon, but with a range of good takeaways. Worth knowing that is only 15 minutes walk to Wimbledon station (BR and District line) if you ever get stuck.

Morden - zone four (finally!) and therefore cheaper again for property. Does now finally have a supermarket of its own, which seems to be a sign of the general renaissance that's happening there. Lots of buses from outside the station.

THE MISERY LINE

Well, not any more. I also use the District line quite a lot, and frankly the Northern line is quicker, more reliable and has a better service. The new trains (replacing the ones with wooden floors!) are much better, and have a handy voice address system, so even if you can't see out of the window through the mass of bodies you do at least know whether to start carving a route to the nearest door. There is also a LCD screen which tells you the next station and the train's final destination, which is handy if you sprinted for the train and didn't have time to check where it was going.

The major problem with the new trains is that their door-beeps (the noise that warns you that the door is about to shut) sometimes get stuck in the 'on' position, and so you have to sit for a whole journey listening to a very irritating beeping noise. Also, they still don't have proper air-conditioning (this would involve major engineering work to the tunnels) but the air blowers are definitely improved.

As far as service reliability goes, its pretty high. There are a couple of stations that tend to get flooded when it rains really hard (Kennington and Morden) and there is the occasional a signal failure, but I've only ever had to get off and get the bus twice in the last three years. And one of those was because someone had thrown themselves onto the tracks, which really isn't the Northern line's fault.

It does get c
rowded at rush hour, but its rare that I can't physically force myself onto the train, and there are plenty of things to hold on to if you don't get a seat. My major complaint is that, if you're short, in summer you get a wide variety of unpleasant, strap-hanging armpits shoved in your face. Ugh!

Summary: