Love Your Journey from Wallop Film on Vimeo.

World Freestyle Football Champion Andrew Henderson takes us on a tour of London with a difference in this video, showing off some very impressive ball skills as he wanders through the city.

We know that London’s a 24-hour city, but this fascinating video demonstrates how people travel around the capital day and night.

The map illustrate the journeys made by London’s 3.1 million Oyster card holders during one 24-hour period. It was created using data from 16 million daily Oyster transactions, as well as vehicle-location data from the city’s 8,500 buses.

Find out more more at http://jaygordon.net/londonviz.html#sthash.Kne3K4Co.dpuf

By Bengt Bjorkberg

Standing on a platform in Moorgate station and seeing a steam train roll in is not an everyday occurrence, but I had the pleasure of experiencing it this month. OK, it was not a surprise as such, I had gotten my tickets, and London Transport Museum had pulled out all the stops to ensure that this would be a truly unique experience. Not only were there a station manager and police constable in period clothing, there was even a brass quintet entertaining passengers in the station lobby, not to mention the number of passengers that had put on their Sunday best. In fact the number of fellow commuters who seemed to have period Sunday best, ca. 1880-1940 surprised me and I felt under dressed myself!

Whatever interest you may have in trains and underground transportation; there is something magical about the old carriages being pulled by a steam locomotive. I admit that I, like most six-year-olds, dreamt of becoming a train driver for at least a week, but also must admit that I have been known to call roadside assistance for a flooded engine, so I have no specialist interest as such.

Saying that, the sound, smell and sight of this mode of transportation still awakes some romantic interest in the old days and this journey showed me what it may have been like. From the old “What to do in air raids” posters that are still in the third-class carriages to the detailed re-creation of the gas lamps in first-class carriage 353, to the Metropolitan Railways coat of arms on the locomotive, it all served to make it a unique experience of how it used to be.

Even if you did not have tickets, there was a chance to see the train along its route as it travelled from Moorgate to Edgeware Road and back. Judging by the number of smiling TfL workers, Transport Police officers and commuters who took the opportunity so snap a picture, it was worth the standard fare to see the train go by.

Did you encounter any of the Steam and Heritage Train Journeys this January? Tell us about it in the comments below

Royal Mail has released a special set of stamps to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground.

The first train ran along the Metropolitan Railway from Paddington Station to Farringdon Street exactly 150 years ago today. The network now has 270 stations and carries 1.2 billion passengers a year.

The new stamps illustrate the Tube’s history, from steam-powered trains to Art Deco stations and the modern Canary Wharf station. They’re available at UK Post Offices from today or at www.royalmail.com/underground.

The year 1863 began with the opening of the world’s first underground railway – London’s Tube – on 9 January, 150 years ago today! Further significant events from 1863 include:

• JANUARY: In railway-related news, construction began in Sacramento, California, of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States.

• FEBRUARY: US inventor Alanson Crane patents a fire extinguisher that uses a combination of sodium bicarbonate and sulphuric acid to shoot pressurised water (the world’s first fire extinguisher was patented in England in 1723)

• MARCH: A Royal Wedding in the UK when The Prince of Wales Albert Edward (later Edward VII) married Princess Alexandra of Denmark at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.

• APRIL: George Gilbert Scott’s design for the Albert Memorial was formally approved by Queen Victoria (it took 10 years to build and opened in 1872).

• MAY: The Salon des Refuses exhibition opens in Paris, featuring works of avant-garde artists including Manet’s Le dejeuner sur l’herbe.

• JUNE: The Victoria & Albert Museum‘s recently opened North Court featured its first exhibition this year – a display of the wedding presents given to the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandria.

• JULY: Madame Tussauds has been open in London’s Baker Street for 21 years. The exhibition at this time featured around 400 famous figures in wax including Horatio Nelson and Sir Walter Scott.

• AUGUST: You could enjoy a summer visit to Hampton Court Palace gardens, which were opened to the public by Queen Victoria in 1838.

• SEPTEMBER: London Zoo‘s public aquarium (the first in the world) has been open for 10 years.

• OCTOBER:  The Football Association is founded at the Freemason’s Arms on Long Acre, London.

• NOVEMBER: US President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address in Pennsylvania.

• DECEMBER: In more railway news, Romania’s first mountain railway opens between Anina to Oravita.

London Transport Museum

Your first stop for any transport-related tourism. At the London Transport Museum you can find out all about the world’s first underground railway, learn about its famous roundel logo and pick up Tube merchandise in the shop, from Tube map iPad covers to books about the Tube.

The museum is great for kids, with plenty of interactive exhibits, including vintage buses to climb on and a simulator giving you the chance to drive a Tube train. This year, the museum is hosting a special anniversary exhibition about poster art on the Tube and has a programme of special events to mark the 150th anniversary.

London Transport Museum Depot at Acton

If the London Transport Museum whets your appetite, head to the museum’s store in West London where you can see the rest of the collection which is not in display in the main museum. There are more than 370,000 objects here, including vehicles, signs, posters, uniforms and photographs. The depot is not open every day and can only be visited on a guided tour or during open weekends. This year’s open weekends are in April and October.

Brunel Museum

The Tube isn’t the only London icon celebrating a big birthday this year; the Thames Tunnel, which connects Rotherhithe and Wapping, turns 170. Built by Marc Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, this is the oldest tunnel in London.

It was designed to carry cargo from one side of the river to the other, but that proved too expensive and so the tunnel opened instead as a tourist attraction in 1843, with visitors paying a penny to walk beneath the river.

In 1869, the first passenger trains ran through the tunnel. It was later used as part of the East London Underground line and is now part of the London Overground. Take one of the Brunel Museum’s excellent guided tours, where you can enter the Grand Entrance Hall of the tunnel.

Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands

At these two museums, you can learn about the Tube’s construction and how it affected a growing city. At the Museum of London’s People’s City gallery, which looks at the rapid expansion of the city between the 1850s and 1950s, you can find out how the Tube and new technologies in transport transformed the way people navigated the city.

Over at the Museum of London Docklands, the New Port, New City gallery examines how the docklands area has boomed in the past few decades, including the building of the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). You can also see part of a DLR carriage on display.

Have we missed anything? Let us know where else you can learn about the Tube

So get your diaries out and pencil in an important date. On 9 January London Underground will celebrate its 150th anniversary. That’s right, a century and a half since the first underground journey took place between Paddington and Farringdon on the Metropolitan Railway. A range of events are planned for 2013, starting on 13 January with a recreation of that first journey.

But if trainspotting isn’t your thing, consider marking the occasion another way. In fact, what better to way to celebrate the Tube’s big birthday than by burying your head in a book about the Underground?

Penguin is the official publisher for the event and will mark it with the release of several tie-in titles. There are short paperbacks themed on individual lines, with the authors offering a personal reflection or a piece of inspired fiction; a definitive history of the Tube; a new collection of Poems on The Underground and a book charting the evolution of London Underground’s iconic design.

Already out is:

• Underground: How The Tube Shaped London by David Bownes and Oliver Green: From the London Transport Museum curators and archive comes an official history of the Underground, which is described as a rich work of social, design and engineering history.
• Poems on the Underground by Judith Chernaik, Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert: A new collection of the much-loved series, including poems not previously published in other anthologies.
• London Underground by Design by Mark Ovenden: Since the 1920s, the Underground’s design – its maps, carriages, posters – has been a part of Britain’s culture and design history. Available from 31 Jan

The specially commissioned Penguin Lines are:

• A Good Parcel of English Soil – The Metropolitan Line by Richard Mabey
• Drift-The Hammersmith and City Line byPhilippe Parreno
• What We Talk About When We Talk About The Tube -  The District Line by John Lanchester
• Heads and Straights – The Circle Line by Lucy Wadham
• A Northern Line Minute by William Leith
• Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo byLeanne Shapton
• The 32 Stops – The Central Line by Danny Dorling
• The Blue Riband –  The Piccadilly Line by Peter York
• Earthbound – The Bakerloo Line by Paul Morley
• Mind The Child – The Victoria Line by Camila Batmanghelidjh
• A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Lineby John O’Farrell
• Buttoned-up –  the East London Line by Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom

There are of course many other existing books on the subject. Journeys on the Tube offer fantastic people watching opportunities and so make for extremely fertile ground for fiction too. Here are a pick of the many publications already available:

• Underground, Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube by Andrew Martin. The author blends reportage, humour and personal stories in this engaging history. He attempts to untangle the Northern Line, visit every station in a day – and find out which gaps to be especially mindful of.
• Underground London by Stephen Smith. An alternative tour around London, as seen from below. Stephen Smith uncovers the secrets of the city by walking through sewers and tunnels under such places as Hampton Court, ghost tube stations, and long lost rivers like the Fleet and Tyburn.
• 253 by Geoff Ryman. This novel tells the stories of the 252 passengers and one driver on a seven-and-a-half minute journey from Embankment to Elephant and Castle. Each character has a page devoted to their stories.
• Mr Becks’ Underground Map by Ken Garland. This contains illustrated colour diagrams of the various maps issued from 1908 to 1964 and also diagrams from Harry Beck’s original sketch in 1931 until his last diagram in 1964.

What’s your favourite book about the Tube?

Last week a steam train chuffed into London’s Baker Street station as part of preparations for the Tube’s 150th  anniversary celebrations that are kicking off in January 2013. This BBC London newsreel explains some of the history of London’s underground as well as showing footage of the first steam train on the network for a good long while.

How are you planning to celebrate the Tube’s 150th birthday in London next year? Let us know in the comments below.

On sale from 10 December, the limited edition Oyster card features the Tube’s shiny new 150th anniversary logo, set against an attractive background of vintage Underground designs. You can use the cards in the same way as usual, either as pay as you go or by adding your Travelcard to it, and they will be available to buy at London Underground stations and TfL Travel Information Centres. The special Oyster cards come hot on the heels of the success of the cards created for the Royal Wedding and the Diamond Jubilee. Grab one while you can – it might be 150 years before they make another one!

Visitors to London from the UK and overseas can buy visitor Oyster cards in advance, although they may not feature the limited edition design.

London is going to be busy during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. An extra three million journeys are forecast for the busiest days of the Olympics, which take place from 27 July to 12 August, and the Paralympics from 29 August to 9 September.

Follow these tips to keep delays and frustration to a minimum – and we suggest a healthy dose of patience as well.

1) Plan Ahead
Don’t dash out of the door and work out your route on the way. Prepare your travel plans in advance using the resources on offer, and remember that every day of the Games is different due to the multiple events taking place.

2) Use the Tools Available
Transport for London (TfL) have created wealth of travel resources for the Olympics, including interactive hotspot maps for public transport and roads which show day-by-day breakdowns of busy areas. There are charts of predicted wait times for each 30 minute period at every tube station and you can search for any temporary road changes in your area. For those with Olympic tickets, there is an online spectator journey planner. You can also sign up to Transport for London’s social media channels for the latest travel alerts.

3) Adapt to the Olympics
If you know your route will be busy, consider leaving earlier or later or taking a different way to avoid peak periods. For short journeys, cycling or walking could be faster – there are 47 tube journeys that can be walked in under 10 minutes. Consider using river transport like Thames Clippers too, as there’ll be extra boat services laid on.

4) Be Aware that Transport will Change
Bus services could be diverted because of temporary road changesand bus stops may be moved or temporarily suspended. If stations are crowded, TfL may introduce a one-way system or close altogether if they get too full. There will be extra services too – Tube and DLR trains will run about an hour later than usual and there will be extra evening services on the Jubilee, Central and District lines.

TfL has outlined planned changes and signs in stations will display the latest information, but it’s wise to check the TfL journey planner before you travel. You can also follow @GAOTG on Twitter or sign up for Olympic travel email updates to keep up to date.

5) Avoid Driving if at all Possible
TfL’s advice is to avoid driving in Central London and around Games venues from mid-July if you can. It also suggests motorists avoid the Olympic Route Network, 109 miles of road linking Games venues together. Watch out for areas where Olympic road events will take place, such as the Cycling Road Races on 28 and 29 July.

You can put any Olympic travel questions to TfL in a Twitter chat on 21 June at 1-2pm. Follow the hashtag #GAOTG to take part.

For more advice on travelling during the Games visit the Transport for London or Get Ahead of the Games websites.