All Tube Stations Have Fifteen Floors
Geoff Marshall1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2018–2023
explainer · general · evergreen · 2018–2023 on HN
Geoff Marshall explains a running gag about London Underground stair signs claiming that the climb equals 15 floors, regardless of how many steps there actually are.
Cited as the explanation for the oddly inaccurate tube staircase signs, and as an example of Marshall's station-detail videos.
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3 comments from Hacker News
This is a great series, and they manage to point out a lot of the oddities of the UK rail system. They also busted my myth that Gloucester station has the longest platform. (It's pretty flipping long though.) Geoff has a bunch of videos about the details of stations or ticket systems. All tube stations have 15 floors: ▶ this video Heathrow to Upminster for £1.50: link Oyster Oddities, are you paying too much?: link
Meanwhile, on the London Underground, the lengths of all sets of stairs down to platform level are described as "equivalent to 15 floors" irrespective of how high they actually are: ▶ this video
Reminded me of this video [1] talking about the fact that there are signs in London tube stations claiming the stairs are equivalent to 15 floors, regardless of the number of steps. The number of floors is roughly correct for Covent Garden, so I guess it's possible that the original typesetter changed the number of steps, but forgot to change the number of floors. [1] ▶ this video Incidental anecdote: While searching for this video, which I'd seen a year or so ago, I googled "tube 15 floors sign", but didn't see a reference to it, so I opened YouTube instead, and there, in recommended videos, was a video about the tube... by the same person that made the video above. It was a short hop to find the correct video. It had never occurred to me that Google personalize youtube searches based on your google searches.