EastEnders and the interior to the Fowlers' is based on a house in Manor Road, Colchester, close to where the supervising art director lived. The fictional local newspaper, the "Walford Gazette", in which local news events such as the arrests or murders of characters appear, mirrors the real "Hackney Gazette". Walford East is a fictional tube station for Walford, and a tube map that was first seen on air in 1996 showed Walford East between Bow Road and West Ham, in the actual location of Bromley-by-Bow on the District and Hammersmith & City lines. Walford has the postal district of E20.
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight ticket from an automated machine. The song starts with the atmospheric sounds of a London Underground station, then a tense, syncopated beat carried by the bass guitar. The lyrics are sentimental, contrasting the warmth of home and domestic life with the dangers of 1970s London's urban decay and casual late-night violence. Tension is heightened by a heartbeat audio effect in the left stereo channel at points during the song. The front cover photograph was taken at Bond Street tube station, on the back cover a portrait photograph of Keith Moon was printed, who had died a month prior to the