Whether you're hacking transit systems or computer systems they're all fissured, all possessing those little cracks just wide enough to wriggle your drity little fingers into and force apart to sneak a peek into what lies beneath the shiny smoothed over facade most take for granted every single day.

Transport For London has done a great job of smoothing over the cracks in The Tube though, merging the old systems into a cohesive whole. They've done this well enough that for a long time the tube was treated with this magical reverence as if it was untouchable, undoable, simply accepted and taken for granted it wasn't going to be explored. It wasn't just the significant consequences, the tube had an aura that seemed to dissuade explorers from even trying. The abandoned stations are no secret, it just took someone to come in and offer it up on a silver platter before the masses would add it to a list and have a shot.

Clearly the writers didn't give a fuck about an aura or the rumours, they'd been chasing trains and cracking the tube open for years. Back in mid 2008 we started seeing the cracks in the network to. From the nocturnal pitches into the cut and cover tunnels of snowhill, to the deep level wonder of the Magic Door, our eyes were being opened slowly to what was possible in the Tube. It became apparent the real barrier to exploring the tube wasn't locks, alarms and sensors (though they certainly exist), it was lack of effort.



I packed out of London shortly after Snowhill and the Magic Door, tagging in Siologen Jeeves Westminster who, inspired by our absolute demolition of the Paris metro and experienced from killing Sydney's subway, began his own major league takedown on the Tube. Only a foreigner would arrive in London hoist the digit to the status quo and come up trumps as SJW did. A fresh perspective and motivation tends to do that.



Back in early '09 Snappel and I were taking in the sights and smells of London for a weekend and met up with ol' SJWIII to hit some tube. The all-but-branded SJW tours weren't going to cut the exploration mustard and I felt the need to redeem myself since I never cracked a station while I lived in London. A tour is a tour is a tour no-matter which way you slice it, so we picked a station he hadn't yet explored and got down to business.

Between snaps, SJW and myself Station ML (haha euro code baby!) quickly delivered her dirty treasures, in a manner which led us to believe that nobody (we know of) had previously explored it because nobody knew what to look for, nobody looked very hard or most likely, nobody ever bothered to actually look. I never did when I was in London.




We checked out another couple of stations over that weekend and it really highlighted how currently tube exploration is so dissimilar to our Parisian metro exploration. The tube is much like climbing to the top of a tree, having a look around, climbing back down and looking around for another tree. The metro in contrast is like donning a squirrel suit and leaping from branch to branch across the forest. If you're doing it right in Paris you're exploring the system, not just poking into small interconnected but non-traversable sections.



London poses other challenges such as the lack of raccord tunnels, the geographical spread of the system, the constant late night track work and the tighter tunnels which leave no room to dodge midservice trains like one does day in day out in Paris. Hurdles or not though put your eyes to the glass of the train and the writing on the wall says it all, it's more than possible.



I'm hoping that those who've followed in the footsteps of SJW, or been inspired by his inroads into the system, will begin to perhaps explore The Tube like a system, or at least discover to what degree this is possible. Further, I'm hoping to see that fresh talent and old hands, whether united of individually, break new ground, new stations and new sights in the Tube. Already some have manned up and added to the tally with previously unexplored stations, while others continue in the shadows of others. In a system so wide there's ample opportunity for many to leave their name, literally or not, on what is the Tube of London. With such a big system begging to be combed for cracks and much up for grabs, why take the tour?