10 Things You Didn’t Know About The London Underground
4. Someone Once Skied Down An Escalator At Angel Station
Escalators sure are fun! They're all the fun of stairs with all the convenience of elevators. Plus, if anyone ever gets on one going the wrong way, it's absolutely hilarious.
The Tube is no stranger to escalators. It has 451 of them scattered across the network. Although some of them are pretty pointless.
Stratford station in East London has the shortest escalator on the entire Underground with a vertical rise of just 4.1m.
Conversely, Angel station on the Northern Line is home to an escalator with a 27m vertical rise. This is taller than a standard tennis court. It's also a whopping 61m long, which is close to the wingspan of a Boeing 777.
One person discovered the escalator's length in a very novel way in 2007. An unidentified Norwegian national managed to travel the aforementioned distance on skis and even filmed the stunt for their YouTube channel.
The video is quite extraordinary, but it drew considerable ire at the time. The British Transport Police called it "naive and reckless" and Transport for London threatened to take "the strongest possible action" if anyone tried to repeat it.
That being said, it does look like fun.
But please, don't try it yourself.