New labyrinths !!!

First, I must acknowledge that, yes, it has been more than three years since my last post.

This is, of course, mostly due to that global pandemic we all suffered.

I also have to admit that the "Close To Home" and "Chronoyster" series are both dead in the water.

The reason behind this new post is that there are new labyrinths on the network.

For a summary, I suggest that you read my original post on labyrinths.

I have taken photos of all 270 original labyrinths. However, since the original set were installed, two new stations have opened on the Underground network, and recently two new labyrinths were installed on-site.

The original set were labelled "#/270" in numerical order of the order that stations were visited for the 2009 world record, from "1/270" at Chesham to "270/270" at Heathrow Terminal 5. Rather than use "#/272", because the new stations are on a branch off of Kennington (which is "110/270"), the new stations are "110a/270" and "110b/270".

Nine Elms is "110a/270" and can be found at street level, just inside the gate line.

Battersea Power Station is "110b/270" and can be found at ticket hall level, outside the gate line. In fact, it is on the wall below the kinetic sculpture "Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset" by Alexandre da Cunha, which is possibly the only example of two Art on the Underground installations on the same wall.

I also took the opportunity to check the labyrinth at Kennington, which I believe is the only example of a difference between the official image and the installed labyrinth. If you go to the official Art on the Underground page for Kennington, where yours truly added a comment pointing this out, you may notice that the image of the labyrinth and their own photos of the installed labyrinth are different.

Generally the labyrinths are a single path with no branches and you must traverse the whole route to get from the outside to the centre. As highlighted above in red, there is a closed loop detached from the rest of the labyrinth. There is still a route from outside to inside, but it traverses all but the closed loop.

Incidentally, you will find this one at the bottom of the lifts on the side you would wait for the lift to take you up to street level.

Surely this must be intentional. I'm sure they wouldn't make a mistake in the production of this one enamel plate out of 270. I thought this easter egg might be a reference to the Kennington loop which allows terminating trains on the Charing Cross branch to turn around and head north. As the Battersea extension was built off of this loop, I wondered if they would take this opportunity to "fix" Kennington, but no they haven't! Of course the Kennington loop is still in use!