Tag Archives: Lost

London Euston – The Lost Tunnels (Tour)

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in Sightseeing, Train & Bus Travel, Travel News & Tips

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London Transport Museum regularly run tours of disused Underground stations and tunnels. These tours are always popular and sell out really quickly. I previously visited the old/disused Strand/Aldgate station and really enjoyed that – so was pleased to get tickets to a new tour of the lost tunnels of London Euston.

The Museum website wrote this about the tour:
Discover a labyrinth of dark and deserted passageways which were once used by the travelling public and see a gallery of preserved vintage poster fragments that have been hidden for over 50 years. This secret space is located below a busy Tube station that serves almost 42 million passengers each year and Euston national rail station.
Tour duration: 75 minutes approx.

We met in Melton Street, outside one of the original station buildings at 17:45 – tour scheduled to start at 18:00.

Tickets and ID checked, high-vis ‘Hidden London’ jackets issued and we were ushered inside the old station building. There wasn’t much to see there, but the room was used to display some slides and allow our guide to talk about the history of Euston Station. Our guide was well-informed and obviously keen on the subject, but as they always hand out a booklet related to the tour, I can read that later – so you can imagine we were a little impatient and keen to see some hidden tunnels after 30 minutes.

We were taken into the main station and down the escalators to a regular underground platform.

At the end of the platform was a normally-locked door – we were lead through into a series of disused tunnels.

The most impressive sight was an old ticket booth, where tickets were sold to passengers connecting between two different railway companies:

I couldn’t resist a picture as the spooky ticket seller – the light really helped with that.

Most of the tour then decided it was a good idea and quite a few similar photos were taken.

The posters were in pretty bad shape and not as interesting as those in Strand/Aldwych.

We walked along a completely circular tunnel.

Viewed an old elevator shaft, now used for ventilation (this picture taken looking straight up).

And looked down onto a working platform above:

We enjoyed the tour, although nowhere near as much as Strand/Aldwych. There wasn’t as much to see and only 40 minutes our of 75 were spent in hidden tunnels.

Improve the chance of recovering a lost smartphone

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Security, Travel News & Tips

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3rd September update: A friend of mine suggested that you could also have an In case of Emergency (ICE) contact number on your wallpaper – and that sounds like a good idea. Other ideas could be adding any allergies and your blood type.

I’ve seen a few Facebook posts recently, whereby someone has found a camera containing some photos, or a smartphone with a photo on the lock screen. All are trying to reunite the owner with their property.

Here’s the last one, I saw posted by a friend of a friend (UK-based Sarah Ashley-Ruff) a couple of days ago:

Found an iPhone 5 at V Saturday, trying to reunite with the owner who I guess is the young lady in this pic. Everything else has failed so far. Come on Facebook let’s reunite this phone with owner!

lostphone

I can see that the phone doesn’t have any service, so the owner can’t call, nor can they use ‘Find my iPhone’ to find it.

The finder can’t unlock the phone and so the only clue is the photo. And yes I did notice that the girl is pretty cute, but also way too young for me even if I were available.

If you recognise the couple in the photo then let me know and I’ll pass on the news.

So it made me think about my own iPhone. My current lock screen wallpaper is just the default picture – it doesn’t even have a picture of me to circulate on social media if I lost the phone.

I decided that what I need was to change my wallpaper to a picture that also contained some text that could assist the finder reunite me with my phone. Sadly the iPhone photo editor doesn’t have the ability to add text to a photo. However, there are a few ways to do this:

  • Add text to a photo using a application on your home computer – Microsoft Paint can do that. Then email the picture to your phone and save.
  • Download a free app that can add text to pictures. I downloaded and tried an app called Phonto and that worked pretty well.

Whatever method you use, don’t add text to the top half of the photo as the time/date display will overwrite your text. My attempt is below:

Bug Advisor Lost iPhone.To make this photo the wallpaper on an iPhone:

  • Choose [Settings] [Wallpaper] [Choose a New Wallpaper]
  • Browse the photos folder for the photo you created with text added and select the photo.
  • You will then see your photo with the time/date display superimposed over the top of it.
  • Move your photo around until it looks okay.
  • Choose [Set] [Set Lock Screen].

Now lock your phone and test to see if that appears ok. Mine looks like this:

Lost Phone complete

The ‘swipe to unlock’ blurs the picture, but the reality is clear enough. I chose $70 as it seemed like a reasonable reward – I used dollars as most people know the value of a dollar in their own currency.

Sorry these instructions are only for iPhone as that’s what I’m using. I’m sure you can something similar on other phones such as Android etc.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple add a ‘if lost text’ feature to their next version of iOS – nut until then..