How much should a support team be allowed to do? - LOCKED

[palkanetoijala31]

It does seem that this debate has raised quite a few issues within the forum i actually voted for all 6 but thats my personal opinion.I believe yes we are shooting ourselves in the foot a little bit though.

[joy54]

Hakan I seriously doubt that 30 minutes could be gained from door holding or even close to that, I feel that this hasn't been a problem before and the record gained currently has been using door holding, if Guinness were to suddenly ban them it would be unfair advantage to those before the change. If we look at the Brown's record which was gained using door holding at probably its maximum they gained maybe 15 minutes maximum and that was just on one change, all the other door holding was negligible due to later delays which I think isn't used in your model.

Agreed with Matt about the thread being on show, I assume this will just have to be an agree to disagree situation.

[tubeguru]

OK, I feel the need to raise some points on all of this:

1. You are all taking it too seriously
2. Er, that's it

[hwolge]

Hakan I seriously doubt that 30 minutes could be gained from door holding or even close to that, I feel that this hasn't been a problem before and the record gained currently has been using door holding, if Guinness were to suddenly ban them it would be unfair advantage to those before the change. If we look at the Brown's record which was gained using door holding at probably its maximum they gained maybe 15 minutes maximum and that was just on one change, all the other door holding was negligible due to later delays which I think isn't used in your model.

Agreed with Matt about the thread being on show, I assume this will just have to be an agree to disagree situation.

I think my math is more or less accurate, and as you say they may have earned 15 minutes, and they certainly didn't have GU holding doors at every change! The point is that most times you don't miss a train with less than 30 seconds, but you will, statistically, do it a few (maybe 5-6) times during a whole day.

And, tubeguru, discussing the issue does not necessarily mean you take it serious.

[tubeguru]

And, tubeguru, discussing the issue does not necessarily mean you take it serious.

I didn't say that - I sense it's being taken too seriously by the posts made, not simply by the discussion being started.

[joy54]

They did have a support team all day, Ollie from Chesham until afternoon and then me and the two Matt's in the evening, but the point I was making was not the fact that you may make 5-6 changes but that down the line those changes may not help you. The example with the Brown's was at Finchley Central (the only other place doors were actually held) this was countered by a wait at High Barnet for a bus and by this time two other trains had arrived into High Barnet so sometimes those gains in times are not gains at all.

[hwolge]

They did have a support team all day, Ollie from Chesham until afternoon and then me and the two Matt's in the evening, but the point I was making was not the fact that you may make 5-6 changes but that down the line those changes may not help you. The example with the Brown's was at Finchley Central (the only other place doors were actually held) this was countered by a wait at High Barnet for a bus and by this time two other trains had arrived into High Barnet so sometimes those gains in times are not gains at all.

Are you actually saying that there was a potential "door holder" present at every change (more or less) through out the day?

Given how the buses run from High Barnet during most of the day (the average is around 9 useful buses/hour between 3pm and 7 pm), I'd say that a 15 minute gain at Finchley Central must be considered a 15 minute gain, even if it "happens" to be lost again... I don't think it was "given" that no bus would show up in those fifteen minutes!

This is of course a "statistical truth" that I'm arguing, not an absolute. E.g. I'd argue that statistically the UK would be in any given European Fotball Championchips playoff...

[Starkey7]

It wasn't a fifteen minute gain; High Barnet trains come through every few minutes.

[hwolge]

It wasn't a fifteen minute gain; High Barnet trains come through every few minutes.

Sorry, I assumed you caught the MHE shuttle by holding doors... My mistake. So we are talking about a 4 minute gain then.

[Going Underground]

They did have a support team all day, Ollie from Chesham until afternoon and then me and the two Matt's in the evening, but the point I was making was not the fact that you may make 5-6 changes but that down the line those changes may not help you. The example with the Brown's was at Finchley Central (the only other place doors were actually held) this was countered by a wait at High Barnet for a bus and by this time two other trains had arrived into High Barnet so sometimes those gains in times are not gains at all.

Are you actually saying that there was a potential "door holder" present at every change (more or less) through out the day?

Given how the buses run from High Barnet during most of the day (the average is around 9 useful buses/hour between 3pm and 7 pm), I'd say that a 15 minute gain at Finchley Central must be considered a 15 minute gain, even if it "happens" to be lost again... I don't think it was "given" that no bus would show up in those fifteen minutes!

This is of course a "statistical truth" that I'm arguing, not an absolute. E.g. I'd argue that statistically the UK would be in any given European Fotball Championchips playoff...

1) Door holders are of no use underground as they cannot be contacted so there is not much point in having a person at every change...Sure they can "anticpate" your arrival but you simply cannot hold trains on this basis...

2) Ollie was with us from the start until 4pm when he handed the watch over to Matt.... Ollie did not hold any doors but he was a great help in taking Rachel's, Ryan's and my rucksack when we did the out of network runs...

3) We only had a large support team from around 7pm in the evening and we deployed them in getting train numbers on a couple of the franctic underground changes / cross platform etc... Also we send them on ahead to confirm when trains had departed so we knew how long we had on a couple of interchanges...

4) The doors were held at Finchley Central for a few seconds as we returned from Mill Hill East... As Steven stated this did not gain us any time as we were waiting several minutes for a bus at High Barnet and at least another 2 trains had arrived in this time......

[Soup Dragon]

I think this should be taken seriously and the topic deserves the amount of debate it has attracted. We are talking about Guinness World Records and not some random challenge that nobody really cares about. I guess the whole problem with holding doors is where do you draw the line? As we know from Sam & Steve's GWR attempt they beat the record by 5 seconds, so it is possible to break the record by small fractions, obviously you could gain time at Amersham by holding the doors a couple of times but would anyone seriously consider doing this? I think this would clearly be cheating and outside the spirit of the challenge.

Once the challenge is actually underway I think it is fair for team members to hold a train for their fellow team members, however you should only really hold the doors once or twice maximum. There have been several occassions when myself and John have let a train go simply because the rest of the team were too far behind, one time we all made the North Harrow to West Harrow but Kevin didn't, so we had to let it go.

As for support team holding doors, I don't think it's anything to do with disrupting the network or getting a bad name for tube challengers. It comes down to what you think is fair and what is cheating. As joy54 said we have benefitted from this on out last attempt but I think we need to consider in future what we expect the support team to do (I don't want to sound ungrateful). Take the Finchley Central issue that Steven had where he missed the Mill Hill East connection by seconds because he had no support in place, it's really annoying when a driver can't be bothered to wait 2 seconds for the arriving train, particularly when it means a 15 minute wait for the next one. I think some drivers take great joy in seeing people miss a train!

[Root]

This is the last post I will make in this debate.

It's so simple (I'll put it in red to emphasise the point):

You must abide by the Guinness rules.

Anything else is up to you - use your judgement to determine your actions.

There's nothing more to it.

[tubeguru]

I'll go with that.

We have no "rules" to guide us save for the general behaviour levels expected of anyone travelling on the tube. It's being made to sound as if a set of rules has magically materialised that we must follow and woe betide us if we fail.

[mullardo]

The Support team should be allowed to do anything you would do yourself if you could.

If this involves killing then...

[sweek]

This is the last post I will make in this debate.

It's so simple (I'll put it in red to emphasise the point):

You must abide by the Guinness rules.

Anything else is up to you - use your judgement to determine your actions.

There's nothing more to it.

So the more TfL rules you don't mind breaking and the more you don't mind delaying and possibly damaging trains and running people over, the more chance you'll get the stupid record. Doesn't sound like something I'd like to be a part of anyway.

We all know that if TfL actually knew this they would never allow you to do these Tube Challenges in the first place.