2017 Quiz Answers

1. 8) Isn’t Torpantau Station (at 1,355 feet) correct because the question said ” If your answer is different to ours but is, in fact, higher then that will be a valid answer.”?

   20 b) You’ve got “Barking Reach” but it’s called the “Barking Riverside extension”. ?

2. Here’s an helpful diagram to answer question 6.

   https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KplDtOrq3Gpm_c892T-QlppKLAZsvi3U

3. A rather unimpressive 11 for me; bizarrely I got Q5 completely by chance when reading a Wikipedia article about something else. Thanks as always for the quiz, and for all the great articles over the last year; may 2018 continue in the same vein. Cheers!

4. Q3: Swizz! – or have I missed something? Not that I was in contention for points and prizes, but there are lots of trees and grass in Cavendish Square – it’s a much favoured lunch spot for that reason. If you were being sneaky by referring only to the the square edges, rather than the gardens in the middle, there are trees on the perimeter at the northeast and southwest corner.

5. @Briantist

   Only if there is another roundel at Torpantau.

   As far as I am aware, Boxhill doesn’t appear in the Thomas films, although Stepney (also from the Bluebell railway) does.

   I spent ages poring over the Sutton coat of arms trying to work out if the aircraft depicted really was the pre-war Hannibal airliner it is supposed to be. (The representation of Croydon Airport is inherited from the arms of the Urban District of Beddington, which do date from the time the airport was active – hence the “lie” might be better characterised as an anachronism – which was my answer.

   Cross with myself over No 13 – Googling identified a press report about the third baby (and first boy) in 2009. But Southwark is the Tube station I pass through most often, (although I have never caught a train there – it’s just a useful cut through from Waterloo to Blackfriars Road when it’s raining!) and I’d never noticed that display! Had I been more observant I’d have got 100%

6. Q4 took the most work – using a Crossword solving app to find five-letter words ending with “h”, (“batch”, “beach”, “beech”, “bough”, “dough” “larch”, “north”, “south”, etc) and then going through the A to Z atlas index looking for names starting with such words. Unfortunately that proved very long-winded as the name I was looking for started with “W”

   But once I’d found it, that narrowed down which 2018 project Q3 related to.

   Not sure that I’d have got Q15 had Q14 not already got me thinking about that mode of transport.

   The big unanswered question about No 10 – how did he manage to put his head out of the carriage window wearing that enormous hat?

7. timbeau: I have no idea whether the setter of that question used the position of “W” in the alphabet to help choose that exact question. But the deliberate efforts usually put in to make computer-aided solving as difficult as possible suggests to me that they may have done. Next time one should perhaps use a “starting at the end” approach when searching an alphabetic list? (Or perhaps start in the middle, in case the setter next year has read this comment!). But well done for persistence!

8. Well, I think I did respectably. I only dropped 5 points across the 20 questions.

   Here are some of my thoughts about the questions themselves:

   First, because I live on the Portsmouth Direct line, Q1 took me a whole 3 seconds to get!

   I found Q3 quite easy because I had been reading some of the material in the Oxford Street consultation and so I knew about the reversal of direction. The bit that caught me for a little while was the “park with no trees” though I soon realised what that meant. Using this answer, I was then able to scan the West End on a map until I found the answer to Q4.

   Q9 was one of the earlier ones I managed to get though I was also one of the people who thought it was inaccurate. In particular, I pointed out that there was a second “1,2,3,4,5” missing as there was a period of about a year after the reopening of Terminal 2 during which Terminal 1 remained open.

   I undid myself on Q12 through semantics. Where it said “station that used to be a green area”, I got it stuck in my head that it was an area that used to be green but no longer was! As such, none of the rest of the question made any sense to me. The only thing I managed to work out was that Orient meant east.

   Like Timbeau, I am also cross about Q13. Every source I could find said that only 3 babies had been born on the Underground (plus the story about Jerry Springer’s birth which I thought was a red herring). The problem was that I couldn’t work out what was meant by “a source close to the TfL main offices”.

   Not sure if I would ever have gotten Q14 by myself. I kept following false leads!

   I’m annoyed with Q15. I didn’t know about the existence of those boards (despite being quite the DLR fan!) and through internet searches could find precious little about information boards on the system.

   I hardly knew where to begin with Q18. I did at least identify the significance of the Northern line but I couldn’t get anywhere with it.

   Finally, I thought that Q20 was a brilliant idea. The one snag I had was working out which of 2 answers to part d was less obvious. I came to the conclusion that while Mail Rail was more obvious to me (it’s the first thing that comes into my head when Paddington and Whitechapel are mentioned together), if this actually was Pointless the Elizabeth line would be higher scoring. As an aside, I was able to identify a second (less obvious) answer to part f which instead of being an Underground station is in fact an Overground one: Crystal Palace!

9. I had two answers for Q2 and I plumped with the wrong one “strike called off ”

   Q7 I noted that Arsenal, Cyprus, King George V, Kingston, Morden, Prince Regent, Royal Oak, Victoria, Wallington, Waterloo, Westminster and Willington are all both stations and engine names.

   Q8 @TIMBEAU – I spent ages checking the height of all the stations on the Brecon Mountain Railway…. I still don’t get what the “different … but is … higher … will be a valid answer.” means?

   Q11 I’m still sure that Hainault Station has the shown layout.

   Q12 I got the three mills but mistook the last question to be referring to a renamed Pic station to be referring to “Association football” and going for Arsenal (Highbury Hill) station!

   Q13 The internet said three plus Jerry Springer. How I was supposed to an offline poster.

   Q18. I still don’t get the answer. I thought the “Wartime Crossrail” ran like this … https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Wh3aE_Y-bRF2HZ-xtAO0pcOfM1MLQLZi

10. Q6. Isn’t Stratford international operated by HS1 and only served by South eastern trains?

11. Malcolm, timbeau

    It was nothing so sophisticated as that. It just struck me when walking around the area how unusual to have a name with two ‘h’s in the middle. Also that it would be a good quiz question because I didn’t think there would be any way of just looking up the answer. Obviously, I was not entirely correct.

    Something else that I was not totally correct on was that I strongly suspected there would be only a single valid answer in the whole of the UK, it was that unusual.

    I thought it was quite surprising how many people answered this correctly. Hardly anyone got it correct without also getting question 3 correct suggesting that they relied on the hint – though, as timbeau points out, it could work the other way round.

    NickBXN,

    I never stated that the answer for question 3 didn’t have trees and grass. I said it contained a park which didn’t have trees or grass – and the subterranean car park doesn’t. Judging by the fact the number of correct answers on this one, I think most people picked up on the subtle difference. I am afraid subtlety is a fundamental part of the London Reconnections Quizzes.

12. [Moderator’s note: Would people please refrain from using up as many electrons as Greg does in this message in giving a line-by-line commentary on their own performance. Comments like “I think I scored xx and I wish I had scored yy” are fine, but too much detail is, well, too much. I have not wasted my time editing Greg’s comment to make it shorter, and I have not deleted it utterly, as he does make some respectable challenges to certain questions. “Respectable”, but not necessarily valid or correct – I leave that to PoP (as a major question setter and spokesperson for other setters) to respond if he wishes (though the adjudicator’s decision is of course final in any case). Malcolm]

    OK
    1 TICK
    2 I muddled my answer … half-right, maybe
    3. PICTURE of Cavendish Square: HERE – It’s got both grass & trees in it.
    SO WRONG on your part, not ours.
    4. Crafty! One you either know or don’t.
    5.TICK
    6. Really? In what way does Farringdon, a TfL station with Thameslink trains not qualify? The TOC, Thameslink has no control over the station, does it?
    7. Ok, very good.
    8. Half-right Brecon Mountain. I wasn’t aware of the museum at half-way point.
    9.. Given that I regard Theifrow as several stages of hell lower than Birmingham, I suppose it was inevitable that I hadn’t a clue! I hope that I never, ever, have to fly from there ….
    10.TICK
    11. Yes, well, I should have got that one.
    12. I thought immediately of Elephant & Castle, but the lines are the wrong way ( E-W ) around. Brain fade I suppose
    13. Google & the newspapers say THREE. Surely also an accptable answer?
    14. Was not the Croydon airport in CROYDON, not SUTTON? Even if it was clsoed before the boroughs were reconstituted?
    15. I regard that as cheating.
    16.TICK
    17. TICK
    18. I thought of the famous “Great Bear” tube-map – is this wporth half a point? Maybe, maybe not?
    19. (a) TICK (b) TICK (c) Worng
    20 a) TICK; b) TICK; c) TICK; d) TICK; e) I put Mansion House, oops!; f) TICK; g)
    Err. Does not the Tower Subway count, engineered by Greathead & Barlow, both famous 19thC engineers?

13. To other answerers
    NickBXN
    I agree, Cavendish Sq has both grass & trees in it, so the answer given is flat wrong.

    Anon e mouse
    Disagree, there is a surface park, with trees in it. Because the undergound car-park has no trees is actually irrelevant.

    Braintist
    Hainault? No – I went right through it, about 3 months back – but I should have got Tower Hill, silly me.

    Simon
    No. SE staff at the barriers.
    I still think Farringdon is a valid answer, though.

    PoP
    Not good enough, I’m afraid. There are TWO parks in Cavendish Sq, yes & one is tree-less, but the other one does have vegetation ….

14. Briantist,

    Question 8 stated:

    This year we are asking you to locate the station at which we believe the highest official TfL roundel is located. If your answer is different to ours but is, in fact, higher then that will be a valid answer.

    I think it was pretty implicit that you had to have a roundel at the station. Otherwise you could just answer ‘Jungfraujoch’ or similar.

    Question 11.

    There are quite a few stations with that track layout. North Greenwich was a popular answer. But only Tower Hill has two fixed aspect stop lights mounted between the running rails as shown in the picture.

    Question 13. We try not to have every question answerable by a thorough search of the internet. It is not meant to be a test on computer skills. The idea was to use your skills at interpreting English and think about how ‘According to a source close to the TfL main offices’ might be interpreted. Literally is an obvious interpretation that, surprisingly to me, next to no-one seemed to pick up on. In retrospect I would have made the reference to the source even more obvious.

    I think Question 8 and Question 11 show the danger of unthinkingly rushing to a search engine without really considering the question further. In the case of question 8 a bit more investigation would have found the most likely station (and should have certainly eliminated the least likely station).

    Question 18. And the very diagram you link to shows Chancery Lane on the Central line. The lines refer to the current name of the tube line of the related station. As your diagram shows, the (fanciful) line that would have been built with these shelters is called the Deep Level Shelter line.

15. Simon,

    And according to the National Rail website it is also managed by Southeastern.

16. Greg Tingey,

    As stated earlier I never disputed Cavendish Square contained trees and grass. But as well it contains a [car] park that doesn’t contain trees or grass. Again, the question is intended to be somewhat cryptic. It is not just a knowledge test.

    I think you will find that there are trains other than Thameslink trains that serve Farringdon. There is the little matter of the Circle and Hammersmith & City line trains.

17. @POP

    Q8 – Jungfraujoch? I got it was the Brecon Mountain Railway and looked at their web page.

    https://www.bmr.wales/about-bmr

    It lists Pant Station, Pontsticill Station and “Torpantau Station … only has a platform,”

    Of these three stations, Torpantau is the highest one.

    I worked out which three-stop single-track steam railway- and I had Bexhill/Boxhill for the previous question, so why mention the “highest will be accepted”?

18. A description of the coat of arms of the London Borough of Sutton

    The gold and silver discs in the top third are from the arms of the Borough of Sutton and Cheam. The keys symbolise the ownership of Sutton by the Abbey of Chertsey at the time of the Domesday survey (compare with Croydon) , while the Popinjay is from the arms of the Lumleys, former lords of the manor in Cheam. The black cross represents the See of Canterbury, which held Cheam from the time of Canute. The base of the shield incorporates the shield of the Borough of Beddington and Wallington – with a Hannibal airliner to symbolise Croydon Airport. Carshalton is represented in the chevron, with heraldic depictions of the ponds and oak trees. The double tailed lion and black greyhound are from the arms of former lords of the manor of Stone Court.

    The reference to an airport that closed in 1959 is the least of the ‘anachronisms’* (really ‘telling history’ – one of the jobs of a herald): who owned some land in the 1086 Doomsday Book, who owned land for 5 centuries ending 5 centuries ago, when former lords of manors were such, etc – even the oak leaves representing Carshalton refer to a demolished stately house “The Oaks” and thus everything but the ponds didn’t exist when the borough was created.

    The ‘lie’ we were to find is far less of a lie than the lie that it is a lie.

    *If you want an actual anachronism, then the Heathrow Terminals question should have begun ‘Europa Building’ rather than ‘2’, etc. For obvious reasons the current names were used instead.

19. 15 for me…

    Q4
    Searching for [A-Z][a-z]{3}hh[a-z]{4} [A-Z][a-z]{5} as a regular expression against a text list of London street names solved this easily. Getting the list of street names was the tricky part! Given that it said Street in the question, I assumed that Street would be the answer to the second word.

    Q6
    Stratford Intl is owned by HS1 but operated by SE. NR website will tell you who the operator is of any station.

    Q8
    I went the wrong way on the Brecon Mountain Rly because the FoLT story states that Pant is where it was presented. Didn’t think of translating the picture title into Welsh, which I suspect I should have done.

20. Re Q6 Part B, my understanding was that the Heathrow Connect is a service rather than a TOC. A single TOC, GWR, is designated however for the parts of the service where the train is on the main line. Therefore, any of the stations on this section have services operated by one TOC only (GWR) which is not the operator of the station (MTR Crossrail) and are therefore valid for this answer.

    This is my understanding anyway, based on the Wikipedia page for Heathrow Connect which references p67 of https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/3596/invitation-to-tender.pdf

21. I wasn’t sure about the status of Heathrow Connect v GWR, which is why I played safe by naming Acton ML,

    Terminal 2 was at one time two separate buildings, known as “Building 1” (the older one) and “Building 2”. Only when Terminal 1 was built were the two buildings joined to become Terminal 2. So the sequence is
    (Building) 1
    (Buildings) 1, 2
    (Terminals) 1, 2
    etc

    @Anon E Mouse
    Crystal Palace isn’t an answer because it’s not an Underground station. (By the same token, nor would Old Trafford, Fallowfield or Lillie Bridge)

22. Briantist on Q8: Obviously every question has to be interpreted. But I see the “highest” business as meaning that if a contestant can somehow prove that Jungfraujoch displays an official TfL roundel, then that answer will be accepted. The rest of the question, the picture and so on, are just hints as to the station that the setter believes to be the highest such official-roundel-holder.

    If there was in fact a roundel at all three BMR stations, then the correct answer would be the highest of those. But if (as seems much more probable) the roundel only occurs at one of them, then that is the answer.

23. PoP 14:26 Re Q6 and Farringdon. The question did say ‘for the avoidance of doubt London Underground is not a TOC’. Therefore Farringdon should count surely?? That clarification given opened up a few other possibilities including Moorgate, Old Street, East Putney, Southfields, and probably others.

24. QTR,

    London Underground is not a TOC but it is not the case at Farringdon that all trains at are run by one TOC and the station owned by someone else. Some of the trains are run by London Underground (which happens not to be at TOC).

    I did spend ages on the wording so as not to have these loopholes.

25. Malcolm 17:13, briantist,

    Precisely what Malcolm says. The reason for a higher station comment is that if someone found a higher station with a roundel (and implicitly provided some evidence for it) then they would accept it as a valid answer notwithstanding any clues we had given to suggest a particular answer.

    In the same way two of you found an alternative answer for the previous question which was accepted as valid as it met the conditions.

    The fact that Torpantau does not have a roundel means it clearly does not meet the necessary conditions.

26. Ollie

    My understanding is that Heathrow Connect trains are run by a joint venture between Heathrow Airport and GWR. So the passenger trains that call at the station were not run by ‘one particular TOC’ even if responsibility for other issues have a clear dividing line at Hayes & Harlington.

27. PoP
    What other TOC has trains running through the “Thameslink” platforms, then?
    I’ve just looked at “Table 52” & the only trains shown running through the LL section are labelled “TL”
    Please justify your claim.

28. Moosealot,

    When setting any questions I set and know the answer, I deliberately don’t going looking on the internet for the answers. So I hadn’t even looked at the Friend of LT site. Now I have done I admit is was probably not entirely helpful but it wasn’t the intention to catch anyone out.

    Probably, because of the Friends of LT website, people found it much harder to identify the correct station on the line than if the site hadn’t have existed. The question wasn’t intended to be as hard as it was but it certainly helps me to have a few answers that quite a lot of people don’t get right.

29. Greg Tingey,

    Croydon Airport is actually in Sutton. I got the impression that quite a few people thought we had got this wrong and assumed it was in Croydon when it isn’t.

30. Greg: You ask the wrong question. It should be “what other organisation (other than Thameslink) has trains calling at Farringdon?”

31. PoP: I think you mean “The site of Croydon Airport is actually in Sutton”.

32. Greg Tingey,

    In what way was the Tower Subway located at Rotherhithe?
    And how on earth do you describe something built in 1870 as ‘early 19th century’?

    As to google-provided links leading to articles by The Guardian should be valid for the ‘babies’ question, the question very specifically stated ‘According to a source … The question was more about the awareness of the displays at Southwark tube station than it was about how many babies were born on the Underground – something which doesn’t interest me at all.

    If you have an exam question that starts ‘According to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics…’ then you can’t answer it by referring to the Quantum Decoherence interpretation.

    I have a feeling you really are not going to like some of the questions I have planned for 2018.

    Maybe I will ask ‘According to the Museum of London in what year did the Routemaster first see service on London Bus routes?’ I will tell you now the answer isn’t (or wasn’t last time I looked) 1960 – and that is not even close.

33. Malcolm,

    As a resident not far away, I mean Croydon Airport. The building is still there. The grass that provided the runways is still there – and the runways were always grass never concrete. There is even an aeroplane there.

    I have just about come to terms with the fact that the 194 bus no longer says ‘Croydon Airport’ on the front though it did well into the 21st century.

34. @MALCOLM/Pop

    Q8. Of course. I’m just disappointed that all the time I spent with the contour maps of the area to get the three stations heights simply rendered the wrong answer from the right one!

35. PoP
    Ah – missed the “At Rotherhithe” bit – must wake up at the back, obviously!
    And, having a copy of Travis Elborough’s book “the bus we loved” referring to the RM, rather than the RT, I could probably answer that one correctly ….

36. @PoP “Croydon Airport is actually in Sutton.”

    “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” screams the question setter. But don’t worry, as seemingly saying “Croydon Airport was in the area that is now administrated by Sutton Council” despite having that pedantic preciseness about time is apparently not only a lie, but a wilful lie.

    “I got the impression that quite a few people thought we had got this wrong and assumed it was in Croydon when it isn’t.”

    Given the answer on the card is indeed wrong, it was easier for us hunting the snipe to initially query whether the answer was a failing in ways that were more obvious to us (people interested in transport and geography) – the ‘Croydon’ issue – than the answer’s actual failing in understanding what heraldry is there to do.

37. PoP: I reluctantly concede that you are right. The phrase “Croydon Airport” appears to refer to an airport (which Croydon Airport is not, using the normal meaning of the word “airport”). But, as your bus-blind mention shows, it can also refer to a place (which happens not to be a currently-operational airport).

38. @Timbeau, 16:53
    I should have made myself clearer. What I was trying to say was that in addition to the correct answer of Oval (which was what I put as my answer), I also found another answer which, while not actually an Underground station, is still on the Tube map. I was not trying to claim that it was a legitimate alternative answer.

39. Greg Tingey,

    And, having a copy of Travis Elborough’s book “the bus we loved” referring to the RM, rather than the RT, I could probably answer that one correctly

    The only way you can answer the question correctly as I posed it is to visit the London Museum and read the description under the model of the Routemaster – assuming it is still there and as it was when I was last there. The book will give the wrong answer to the actual question posed because it will give the right answer if you see what I mean (and I know it anyway and I have the book).

    Another fun one for you is to name all the stations that have been served by the Night Overground service in 2017. Don’t waste your time looking for an official answer – it will be incomplete.

40. Greg Tingey 17:38,

    What other TOC has trains running through the “Thameslink” platforms, then?

    You can’t choose to count Farringdon as two separate stations just because it suits your argument. It has four parallel platforms. You can’t arbitrarily assign two of them to a different (mythical) station. It is one station with a station code of ZFD. All the platforms have TfL roundels on them. That should be a bit of a clue.

    The National Rail website says it is run by London Underground. You can go in either entrance in Cowcross Street and get to any platform. And, just in case there are, just because it is managed in its entirety by London Underground, it doesn’t mean that there can’t be Thameslink staff present.

    Rather than expect me to justify myself, how about you putting forward a single factual reference to suggest that Farringdon is actually two stations?

41. Most of Croydon Airport was in Beddington (now part of Sutton) but the terminal buildings were and are in Croydon. So the original boundaries of the airport had retreated to the present much smaller extent of the retail estate that has taken its name before LB Sutton came into existence.

    Tower Subway is not at Rotherhithe, and at the wrong end of the 19th century.

    The questions have been very carefully worded, and most difficulties people have had seem to have been not through a lack of lateral thinking in cryptic clues, but of a not-literal-enough analysis of the wording – for example assuming that “change” would be to another line of the same network.

    Cavendish Sq – indeed has a park with trees and grass – and it has another (car) park with neither. Noting wrong with the question: any more than it would be wrong to say that the Underground has a line with no branches.

    Farringdon; the question asks ” every single passenger train that stops at it being run by a particular Train Operating Company (TOC) ……………….(For avoidance of doubt, London Underground is not a Train Operating Company)” Deconstructing this sentence, we must find a station where all trains are run by a TOC. This immediately ruled out any station served by LUL, as some or all trains there are not run by a TOC at all.

    Having identified the GWML stations as being the new TfL-run ones, I played safe with Acton ML as I was not sure about the status of HConnect. And having identified that line, it was just a matter of trying each station to see which came up as something vaguely engine-related – is the a “Retary” station, for example?
    Wost Ealing? No: Hanwoll? No: Hayos & Harlington? Wost Drayton & Yiowsloy? Aha!

    Kicking myself that the only one I got wrong was by relying on Google when keeping my eyes open as I travel around London would have revealed the correct answer. But then, I’d forgotten that TfL now live on Southwark Street.

42. Q13 is also misleading because Palestra is not TfL’s headquarters = that is Windsor House in Victoria Street. Or, at least, that is where the Commissioner has his offices, which seems to me to be the definition of headquarters. More arguably Palestra might be TfL’s ‘main offices’ only in terms of the numbers of people. Other definitions would still lead you to Windsor House.

43. Which is why I was careful not to state ‘headquarters’. Saying ‘main office only in the sense of the number of people’ is a bit like saying ‘busiest tube line only in the sense of the number of passengers’.

    Far from being misleading, I would say the careful wording was a bit of a clue.

44. Q.13 “Born on the Underground”

    I am curious as to how the poster at Southwark gets to 5 (3 girls & 2 boys).
    The last such birth I have been able to find on the net was “the first boy” at London Bridge in May 2009. Various papers at the time quoted TfL as saying that this was the third birth ever recorded, the previous two being girls respectively born at London Bridge in 1924 and Kingsbury in December 2008.

    This would exclude Jerry Springer who has stated that his mother gave birth to him while sheltering from an air raid in Highgate station in February 1944. Although the tube platforms were in regular Northern Line service by then, I presume that most of the station was still managed by the LNER.

    I understand that there was an official LT administrative procedure for dealing with incidents such as births on the Underground. By 1944 there was also a well established system for issuing tickets to those sheltering in stations. At the time, it would appear that Highgate might have had the only tube tunnel platforms not fully managed by the LPTB. This could explain why his birth would not appear in its official statistics.

    I would be interested to know whether baby Springer was the other boy referred to in the current poster or there was another. Does TfL have an official view as to what constitutes being born “on the Underground”?

45. Quinlet,

    I now realise that, carelessly, I referred to headquarters in the above article. Now corrected.

    I also confused Barking Reach with Barking Riverside. Barking Reach was the name of the power station.

46. PoP
    Farringdon is one station
    It’s run by LU ( Which you state is not a TOC), but ONE TOC uses Farringdon – the Slink.
    But the Slink do not run the station do they? The non-TOC LUL/TfL do, don’t they?

    Or are we arguing at x-porpoises here? ( other wise known as a whale of an argument )

    [I suggest that the discussion about Farringdon has run its course, Pedantic is not going to accept your arguments (not that I think he should), and you (Greg) do not seem ready to accept his, so that appears to be that. Malcolm]

47. Surely if the plans to build another terminal at Heathrow come to fruition, it would make sense to call it Terminal 1 rather than Terminal 6, given that there will then be five terminals, and the other ones will be Terminals 2,3,4 and 5. As to what actual plans are….

48. It may be interesting to discuss whether the baby poster at Southwark is correct. I suspect that we will never know definitively, as one can always hypothesise additional births of which the record has not survived.

    But the question was not about the “correct” number of births, it was about about something else, as was made clear both in the wording of the question and in (uncontradicted) comments made about it during December.

49. The Terrier Tank “Boxhill” (LBSCR no 82, transffered to departmental use in 1913 and withdrawn in 1946) is a static exhibit at the National Railway Museum and unlikely to have ever been used for filming, unlike many working preserved locomotives. It is mentioned in “Thomas & the Great Railway Show” (1995) when Thomas (an ex-LBSC loco himself) visits the mueum.

    No 397 was named Bexhill (an 0-4-4T withdrawn in the 1930s)

50. Michael Jennings: Your plan might have some merit, but it would be very confusing for the first decade or two. People tend to keep old tube maps, and old knowledge in their heads.

    But in quiz adjudication terms, if you or anyone gave that as an answer and explained it clearly, I am sure it would be accepted.

51. In the summary of answers above Q6 is precissed as “a station in the London area that at December 1st 2017 had just one TOC serving it ” Farringdon does indeed meet that definition. But that wasn’t the original question

    But the original question was “a station in London that has every single passenger train that stops at it being run by a particular Train Operating Company (TOC)” and Farringdon does not meet that definition because some trains calling there are not run by any TOC.

    And if we want to be literal, the Scottish answers to Q4 should be valid since they are indeed only a few hundred miles from Cavendish Square, and certainly not a million!

52. Malcom & PoP
    Agree to disagree about Farringdon – I think we are using different definitions, which really doesn’t help.
    P.S. I still think Cavendish Sq doesn’t count, but hey ….

    Timbeau
    SMILEY

53. OK, I had taken the description as meaning National Rail only, especially with the clarification of LU not being a TOC, otherwise why clarify that LU isn’t a TOC – could just say it is a TOC and it avoids any confusion but still end up at the same answer. A bit of a cheap question I think, some totally unnecessary wording.

54. Yes, I also found some information that stated that Pant is where the presentation happened, so I assumed it was there. Still, I’m not bothered since I didn’t get enough answers to feel it was worth submitting.

55. As a side note in regards to Q13, while the Guardian article referenced above reports three births, there was also a baby born at Highbury and Islington station in February 2017 (Theo), and a baby born at Whitechapel in 2007 (Alexa) – thus the wording ‘Five and counting.’ These births were covered by TfL’s employee communications channels, even if they were not covered more widely in the public press.

56. @AG

    Thank you – so it seems that the definitive answer is indeed five. (All but the most recent being on the deep tubes, to answer an earlier query).

57. Thanks for this quiz. Always a challenge, I like your cryptic wording. Well done for Cavendish Square (I didn’t get it, because I did not know about the car park, but it was a clever question). It’s a shame people argue and get angry with what is a quiz set by one person (I assume) for a bit of fun!
    Happy New Year.

58. One curious parallel between questions 10 and 19 is that ‘Farewell to the Light Brigade’ is also one of a pair of near-identical paintings.

    Robert Collinson first painted the scene in 1863 with the title ‘Recalled on Service’. In 1885 he did it again, this time as ‘Farewell to the Light Brigade’.

    Considering how the Light Brigade was already famous in 1863, one may speculate that the chap was not originally going to the Crimea and was only repurposed for that in 1885. But the painting in the quiz is definitely the 1885 version (seen most clearly in that the railwayman’s signal flag now occults his shirt collar), so the answer is right,

    (Q10 yielded immediately to a Google reverse-image search for me, but Q19 didn’t — there I had to look up pictures of all the London termini to find a train shed roof that matched the one in the painting).

59. Now that I think about it, I have to admit that I am very curious to know for some of the tougher questions (like 13 or 18) how many people (out of those who submitted their answers) actually got them correct.

60. Anon E. Mouse,

    I will report back with some analysis when I get a chance to collate the information. It need a decent chunk of free time to be set aside so might take a week or two.

61. For Q19 it was the sign saying “West Side platforms” that narrowed it down – as we were clearly looking at the left hand side of the train shed and that meant the view is facing north.

    I didn’t know Cavendish Square had a car park either, but Google Street View revealed all.

    I was originally thinking it might be West Smithfield, which is another circular open space with an underground car park, but that isn’t square in name or nature, and I could find no suggestion of plans to reverse its circulation.

62. HM
    Well, some of us just looked at the picture in 19 & went “LST” – if only because, up to the end of the stean suburban services in 1959/60 it still looked very much like that(!)

63. PoP 1 January at 20:53

    “The only way you can answer the question correctly as I posed it is to visit the London Museum”
    I feel that this excludes me from answering this question. How many other questions require a personal visit in order to answer correctly? How many readers, like myself, would find such a requirement exclusive; or at least too expensive to consider?
    I still find the quiz challenging and enjoy seeing what few questions I can get right.
    Q1 & 2 I found easy. Q3 I guessed a car park but got no further. Q4 I was looking for a three word name. Q7 I discovered that Boxley was a layout/XML/CSS rendering engine but got no connection with films for either that or Bexley. Q8 Got the r’l’y but not the station. Q14 I guessed the coat of arms. Q16 Is this one that requires mk 1 eyeball? Q20 I got a) b) c) and f).
    So thanks for the challenge.

64. The quiz is bound to be easier for people who live in or near London, for whom personal research is possible. Technically PoP’s suggestion that (for a particular hypothetical question which could possibly occur in a future quiz) a visit to London Museum is required does not actually say that the answer-submitter has to visit London – they could always get someone else to visit the museum on their behalf, or enquire of the staff, or something.

    But yes, London quizzes will typically always be easier for Londoners. Particularly quizzes like this one where efforts are made to keep it from being just a test of internet skills.

65. @MALCOLM

    I must admit that I made a trip into Foyles to answer question 5!

    For 20g) I remembered reading that there had been a previous attempt at the under-Thames tunnel and looked it up from there – for example https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/04/01/tours-of-a-disused-tunnel-under-the-thames-announced/

    I’m still convinced that Q11 fits for Hainault Station and Q9 for Twickenham Station, but I also learnt a lot getting these answers, which I think is the fun of a great quiz – I’m an avid watcher of Only Connect!

66. @Briantist: “London Under London” is quite a handy reference for lost rivers, missing tunnels etc..

    Sadly Mr. Trevithick doesn’t get the credit he deserves. I recently read up on him after seeing a blue plaque attached to the Royal Victoria and Bull in Dartford. It surprised me to find he had been there.

67. The current (temporary) layout at Tower Hill (stop lights obstructing the entrance to one end of a double-ended reversing wye) is surely not replicated anywhere else. But if someone can provide a picture of such an arrangement at Hainault, or anywhere else, I’m happy to be proved wrong.

    Carto Metro shows a much more complex layout but, even if you take away everything else, the centre platform (2) is shown as accessible from both ends. Likewise at North Acton

68. Timbeau: the extra (apparent) complications on Carto Metro, as you probably realise, are things like the DLR passing underneath, the dead platforms of the former Mark Lane station, the fairly-near Minories Junction, etc. Plus the fact the Carto Metro (I think) deliberately has its scale adjusted for extra clarity.

    But of course you are quite right (probably) that the temporary stop lights are the feature which gives the question a unique answer. And their temporary nature accounts for their absence from Carto Metro. A question which could be answered only from that site would have been rather more elementary.

    North Acton and Arnos Grove (and maybe other places) have a similar layout, but without the stop lights. Hainault, according to Carto Metro, does not, as it happens – though even if it did, the (presumed) lack of temporary stop lights would rule it out as an allowable answer.

69. @Malcolm
    I know I’m only being pedantic here but can I point out that Arnos Grove does NOT have a similar layout to the diagram in question, for two main reasons:

    1) Arnos Grove is a dual island platform layout as opposed to an island + side platform layout.

    2) Arnos Grove has additional crossovers that allow trains to reverse back towards central London from any platform, not just the centre one.

    (There is also the added complication of the connection to the sidings there.)

70. The Tower Hill layout was mentioned on one of the threads about the SSR re-signalling project…

71. Anon.E.Mouse: You are quite right. My excuse for accidentally disregarding the position of the platforms is that on my model railway layouts, platforms were an irrelevant bit of decoration. The “layout” meant where the track and points were.

    I have no available excuse to hand about the other matters, though.

72. @SH(LR) ……which is I think how I found the answer.

    @Malcolm – my reference to extra complications was to the layout at Hainault. Apart from the absence of mention of stop lights, the SSR layout at Tower Hill is depicted on Carto Metro exactly as it is in real life.

73. Timbeau: Sorry that I misunderstood.

74. @rayk/Malcolm

    I have lived, studied, and worked in Greater London for the last forty years, but I found all the answers using the Internet, so I don’t think country cousins or even overseas readers were at a huge disadvantage.

    (I can probably count the number of Tube journeys I made last year on my fingers, likewise buses – and one taxi)

    (All the answers – including my wrong one for Q13. Had I kept my eyes open when using Southwark station as an exit from Waterloo East I might have got that one right!)

75. I managed to work most of these out (ie look most of them up), once I got into the cryptic mindset.
    3. Cavendish – my lead into this was that I guessed it was part of a major road reorganisation so looked around Oxford St first
    6b. – I listed West Ealing etc with a note ‘on the basis that Connect services become GWR when they’re on the main line’, had I sent this in I’d be a tad piqued if I’d got marked down.
    11 Difficult unless you know, couldn’t see anything on-line (my excuse for getting it wrong)
    12 – worked out it was Mills, but didn’t know about Acton
    13 – I put 3 although I guessed it was probably wrong
    14 – I still don’t regard this as a lie, merely a typical anachronism that’s on a herald. But hey, the judge’s decision is final.
    15 – surprisingly easy when you realise how pedantic (the clue is in the name) the wording is on the other questions
    18 – hadn’t got a Scooby with this one – I’ll now have a read up about it, thanks for this.

    Pop – I enjoyed this and next year I’ll actually submit my answers, so thanks for all the time you put into this.

    Cheers
    Joe

76. @ Joe
    For 6b, West Ealing also has the Greenford shuttle, so will continue to be served by two TOCs even when Crossrail provides all services on the main line.

77. Lots of fun as ever, and this year I gotenough answered to enter – not enough, I’m fairly sure, to feature in the prizes as I did once several years ago,

    Surprisingly many questions fell to direct Internet lines of attack. 10 & 19 both to Google Reverse Image Search. For 4 I found a set of 26 linked web-pages listing London streets A-Z and ^F searched for “H H” (shame it was on “W”!), 5 I hadn’t a scooby so tried searching the Wikipedia article on the Underground for the letter “z” – success!

    Look forward to seeing the results and to next year’s quiz.

78. Have the winners been chosen yet?

79. John,

    Regrettably no. I have had the analysis of the answers written up since mid-January and still had the task of going through the entries again to identify winners. Unfortunately, I really got hit hard by the flu that was going around in January which serverely limited how much one could do and just as one started feeling better one got a relapse. Then I could bore you with the central heating not working during that cold snap but that is now sorted.

    So I am hoping to finally sort this out over the weekend but no promises. I can then get on with finishing some articles that were largely complete but even here there are problems because it is surprising how quickly Crossrail articles get out of date.

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