Waching daily Aug 4 2018

You're doing London on your wheels and you want to get about, the way

everyone seems to get about in London is the Tube. But just how do

that on wheels ? Well if you've got a national rail card the first thing you

need is an oyster card ( that way up ) because you can't put your national

rail discount onto a bank card, but you can onto your oyster card.

So get your oyster card, get your rail card, get down to a station, and

speak to the staff. They'll add the discount to your oyster card.

After that you can start using the trains. Grab yourself a tube map.

Even the standard ones are useful for wheelies. There's an interesting

quirk to the tube map, there are two types of wheelchair symbol on it that

say the station is wheelchair acessable. There's the blue dot with a white

wheelchair, and a white dot with a blue wheelchair. The difference between

these is that, is that on the blue dot you can get onto the train on your

wheelchair, the white do you can only get as far as the platform on your

wheelchair, there will be a step to get onto the train. Of course if you

can't get out your chair and lift it over a step you're aiming for the blue dots.

If you can you can use the white dots as well as the blue dots. There's a lot

more blue dots now than there used to be, and the white dots are also

disappearing thanks to platform humps and improvements. Next on is to actaully

get yourself through the gate.

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This station's Blackfriars, it's a nice a nice and easy one, because it's only

a subsurface. So trains all level with the platform and it's only one lift to get

to the platform.

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This is one of the new subsurface trains they're great because they're level with

the platform all the way along and have four wheelchair spaces per train.

In the middle of the train, so nice and easy to find and nice and accessable.

♪ music ♪

[ gate beeps ]

That's a trip on one of the subsurface lines, with the new trains they're very

acessible and very easy to use. Now we move onto the more technical

stuff of the deep.

This is something that you'll occasionally meet, dead lifts, it's nothing major to

panic about there are other ways to get out of stations, even if it means

going to a different station and coming back on yourself. Which is what I'll

have to do at this one. But if you don't know how to, get yourself out of a

problem. Come round onto the platform and you're looking for the information

point. Find this thing, press the blue button, and wait for somebody to

answer. They'll give you some help, and help, and help you back on your way,

and where you need to be.

A deep level station, this route is going to involve a change because I wanted

to show you the out of station inter- change it's a couple of weird lifts.

So lets get underground and get moving.

Sometimes you'll find gates that are holding themselves open, if you're

using pay as you go oyster don't forget to touch in [ or out ] otherwise you'll

register as part of a journey and end up paying a lot more.

[ background noise ]

Some of the new stations have doors at the edge of the platform, to let you

onto the train, they'll open along with the train doors when the train gets to

the end, and you just roll onto the train as normal.

[ background noise ]

There's also a tiny step onto this train, it's only about 5 centmeters, dead easy

to wheelie over.

[ background noise ]

These trains are acient, they where built back in ninety six and wheren't

built for wheelchairs. The best you've got is a space like that. It was origanally

meant for luggage but is now used for wheelchairs, it's also very hot and very

noisy. In summer bring something to drink.

At London Bridge you can't change between trains within the station.

You have to leave the station go round the station and back into a different

entrance, to change trains.

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This Northern Line train is as old, hot and noisy as the Jubliee Line train, but at

least it's got a wheelchair space because it's a slightly more modern fit out.

Saint Pancras is one of the stations with a retro fitted platform levelling hump.

Made it to Kings Cross Saint Pancras, now we need to get above ground, it's

not as simple as just getting in one lift and going above ground, this place

has a few lifts and it's quite a maze up there.

♪ music ♪

That was a deep level line, the network may be old, it may be crowded but it's

navigable if you're a wheelie. Now I'm going to grab my train and head home.

PLUR peeps

♪ music ♪