h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This entry is true, very true-I just experienced the vagries of the current lack of escalators on the Northern Line, and with several bags of food (I'm a student, I have to bring food from home to afford to live-sorry) and 50 steps-I have concluded that chivalry is not just dead, buried, but as far as I'm concerned, never made it to the afterlife. Sorry-a slight rant there.

But there is one thing missing, and that is the Heathrow/Northfields Piccadilly tube.

For those who do not know, at times when you most need a tube to Heathrow, then the next train at any station within 8 mins will say on the electronic panel quite clearly 'Heathrow' with the funny looking plane next to it, and on the train say Heathrow on the front, but be in fact, for Northfields, a good 7 or 8 stops before Heathrow.

This makes no odds to me as I live in South Ealing, and hence, these Northfields tubes are a godsend-when caught at South Ken. or Gloucester Road, emptier and with seats free.

Good if you live in South Ealing, not if you live in Ruislip. Like the comment in the main article about the Northern Line, destinations given on the Piccadilly Line are only a rough indication of where the train is terminating - certainly in the evening rush hour. To keep the timetable going, Uxbridge trains are almost always cut short at Ruislip; Ruislip trains get turned round at Rayners Lane; and Ruislip, Uxbridge or Rayners Lane trains can transmogrify (occasionally without warning) into Heathrow trains just before Acton Town. The ultimate has to be the day my Ruislip train was redirected to Heathrow, so we all got off and crossed the platform to a Heathrow train which had been redirected to Rayners Lane...