A London Transport relic - Holborn station, 2014
An interesting item this. A paper "bifurcation" or destination sign in the disused passageways at Holborn station, taken in 2014, and a survivor from the 1930s when the Piccadilly line extensions were constructed and added to the network in 1932/33. It is also indicative of a period of experimentation with signs and sign layouts that took place just after London Transport was formed in 1933 and when various different methods of depicting routes and stations was tried out - on train and station diagrams, signs and the "map". This may have been a "trial" in a quiet passageway (it connects the old Aldwych shuttle platforms) and may well have been covered over by an enamel sign at some point.
It is in Johnston typeface and shows stations as dots but with interchange stations as diamonds, similar to the style Beck worked with on his tube 'map' or diagram at the time. There was also an attempt at the time to use the same visual language on the car diagrams so as to bring a continuity across all aspects of publciity and information as was seen in the post-1935/8 standardisation of line colours. The poster sign also displays the directional arrow - in the form of the roundel with a flighted bar, known as the 'mexican arrow' for some reason. The number of flights on the arrow bizarrely helps date it - after about c1932 it dropped to three from four and in time it 'lost' a flight! Here it has been separately 'posted' on.
A London Transport relic - Holborn station, 2014
An interesting item this. A paper "bifurcation" or destination sign in the disused passageways at Holborn station, taken in 2014, and a survivor from the 1930s when the Piccadilly line extensions were constructed and added to the network in 1932/33. It is also indicative of a period of experimentation with signs and sign layouts that took place just after London Transport was formed in 1933 and when various different methods of depicting routes and stations was tried out - on train and station diagrams, signs and the "map". This may have been a "trial" in a quiet passageway (it connects the old Aldwych shuttle platforms) and may well have been covered over by an enamel sign at some point.
It is in Johnston typeface and shows stations as dots but with interchange stations as diamonds, similar to the style Beck worked with on his tube 'map' or diagram at the time. There was also an attempt at the time to use the same visual language on the car diagrams so as to bring a continuity across all aspects of publciity and information as was seen in the post-1935/8 standardisation of line colours. The poster sign also displays the directional arrow - in the form of the roundel with a flighted bar, known as the 'mexican arrow' for some reason. The number of flights on the arrow bizarrely helps date it - after about c1932 it dropped to three from four and in time it 'lost' a flight! Here it has been separately 'posted' on.