(Picture: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)

If you live in London then you probably use it every day. But how much do you know the network that ferries millions of people around the capital?

Here are 21 facts about London Tube stations: is your local station on this list?

1. On Comic Relief day, the staff at Oval station put a a special Underground roundel in the shape of an oval.

2. Balham is the only Underground station that doesn’t have any of the letters of the word ‘underground’ in it.


3. On the columns at Temple station, there are small temple-shaped emblems at the bases. Coincidence?

(Picture: Tom Page on Flickr)

4. You can can catch a Metropolitan Line train from Rickmansworth to Watford very early in the morning, or the reverse very late at night over a little-used piece of track called The North Curve.



5. There are four platforms at High Street Kensington, and a short tunnel section dug further north where the tracks were going to be extended.

6. At East Finchley, the tiles have have a yellow and black trim border on then. The colours of a Finch are… yellow and black.

7. You don’t need to wait for the barriers to close before you touch the Oyster pad. If the person in front of you touches in OK with a ‘beep’ you can touch in behind them and keep walking.

(Picture: Andrew Errington/Getty Images)

8. Hidden in the green and cream tiling pattern at Archway station, there are black arches.

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9. On Lower Marsh street next to Waterloo station there is a grill where you can look down on the Waterloo & City line.

10. If you live near (but not at) the terminus of a line, and you really want a seat, travel the wrong way to the terminus and get back onto a train that is starting there, this time with a guaranteed seat.

(Picture: AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

11. The steepest gradient on the system that a passenger can travel on is between Bromley-by-Bow and Bow Road, where the gradient reaches 1:28 (or 3.57% in new money).

12. Don’t believe the signs telling you how many steps there are. A lot of them are wrong: the biggest discrepancy being at Belsize Park, where the sign says 219 steps, but there are actually 189.

13. On the new 2015 tube map (with added Overground and TfL Rail services) there are now 408 stations in total, of which only 270 are tube stations – almost exactly two thirds.

14. There are seven trains in the morning peak on the Hainault to Woodford section (normally as far as they go) that carry straight on into the centre of London.

15. Tube stations operated by Network Rail companies don’t have roundels at them (Richmond, Wimbledon, Upminster, etc) except at Upminster, where there is a lovely old roundel on the signal box at the eastern end of the station.

16. Stay on a terminating Northern line train heading south at Kennington and you’ll go round in a loop, arriving back at Kennington and heading north. People who are drunk/asleep have been known to end up in Edgware, rather than in Morden.

(Picture: Benedict Johnson/Getty Images)

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17. There are 49 abandoned ‘ghost’ stations on the network, plus ‘North End’ (Bull & Bush) on the Northern Line near Hampstead, a station that was started but never completed.



18. Down in the depths of the abandoned Jubilee Line platforms at Charing Cross lies equipment labelled The Fleet Line, which is what the line was going to be called before being renamed The Jubilee.

19. There are just four stations with just one platform (Chesham, Heathrow 4, Olympia and Mill Hill East).

20. The only places where the doors of a train open on both sides (where the train doesn’t terminate) are on westbound Central Line trains at Stratford and eastbound District Line trains at Barking.

21. There is an old corridor and abandoned escalators at Earl’s Court station that used to be a way in/out to the exhibition centre.

(Picture: Kevin Coombs/Reuters)

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