Naturally there’s been a lot of hype surrounding the 23rd James Bond film, Skyfall, which was released on 26th October. A considerable section of the film was shot in London, and if you’ve seen it you may have noticed that one of the key scenes takes place in Temple underground station. Did you notice, however, that the tube station in the shots isn’t actually Temple? Well we’re massive tube geeks. So we did notice…
](/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/London_Underground_Charing_Cross_station.jpg)When filming the scenes last December, the shoot actually took place on a disused Jubilee Line platform at Charing Cross underground station. For underground nerds like us, the differences were obvious. Temple underground station is a ‘cut and cover’ sub-surface station, whereby in construction the street is removed and a hole is dug below for the station and tunnel. The street above is then restored. Charing Cross however is a deep-level tube station. Generally all deep-level stations have curved tunnel walls from where the tunnel was bore out. This is where the dressed up Charing Cross station differs as Temple has straight walls, and the station in the film has the curved walls of a deep-level station. Meaning that James Bond never actually set foot in Temple station.
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OK so possibly you’re not as excited about this as we are. But as tube geeks it’s our job to notice these things, and who knows, this may just be worthy of an after-work pub anecdote.
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