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Hi, newbee here.

Has anyone ever attempted at Wimbledon/Morden start/finish?

My brother and I want to raise money for our cousin's children who have a rare disease where children rarely live beyond the age of 12.

We want to keep the challenge simple (no record attempts!) but cover all the stations before the network closes.

Obviously this start/finish is disadvantageous as it skips an easy switch over, but as I say, we want to keep it simple (we live near Morden).

Anyone ever done this?

Any tips/advice or even route details would be much appreciated

Thank you

While a Wimbledon/Morden start/finish should be possible, it will undoubtedly take longer than for a more conventional start & finish, and therefore will give you less chance of a completion (if that is your main aim) as you will have less contingency time if things go wrong.

Another factor you may wish to consider is how to do Olympia for which there are very few weekday District line trains (except on the very rare exhibition service days) - I think just four early morning and two in the evening. A Wimbledon start may enable you to pick up one of these early morning ones (but you will need to check this out).

My advice would be to plan a route, check out the times using Journey Planner and then test bits of it to see if your assumptions are realistic. You can then iterate for a number of times, depending on how much preparation you want to do.

Make sure you figure out how you're going to do Amersham/Chesham, Epping, Heathrow and Upminster, because they're the four stations that don't link up so well. If you leave Wimbledon on the first train (which is the 0453), you might want to get something done before Olympia - the H&C from Edgware Road to Hammersmith comes to mind, something along the lines of this:

Wimbledon Earls Court Edgware Road Hammersmith (H&C) Hammersmith (Dis/Pic) West Kensington Kensington Olympia (on foot) an early morning Ken Oly train, e.g. 0606 or 0615.

Didn't Geofftech finish at Morden in the "infamous" Tube episode?

Going Underground wrote:Didn't Geofftech finish at Morden in the "infamous" Tube episode?

There is certainly "a dodgy KFC at Morden" involved at some point.

Yeah, Tube 3 (The Tube episode) featured the Morden finish.

I've started thinking about an epping start/ finish but I don't know how it will work!

Epping start was done two or three years ago for children in need.

Wimbledon start make ken olympia quite simple but the Met in the north west corner is a long double back. You should be able to complete in a day.

Adam9317 wrote:I've started thinking about an epping start/ finish but I don't know how it will work!

we did an epping start and wopped out some many stations in a row before tackling ken o out of the way it did involve me running a significant amount of distance from highams park to woodford though.

Has anyone ever considered the heathrow express?

Adam9317 wrote:Has anyone ever considered the heathrow express?

Geoff did once. Don't try it. http://geofftech.co.uk/tube/tube1.html

I used it a couple of times when T4 was closed during the building of T5. It served its purpose but it's not so practical now.

Adam9317 wrote:Has anyone ever considered the heathrow express?

i used heathrow connect to get from T123 to ealing broadway, it helped a bit but being that the train left on time it got delayed around the hayes and harlington area which was a bit annoying

I had a route that started at Hatton Cross, went to T4 then used the Heathrow Express to get to T5 - the express wasn't running to time so it fell apart 2 out of 3 rimes from memory.

Epping start has very little going for it now that the central doesn't run to Ongar (i.e. since 20 years ago) as while it saves on a 15 min double back you end up doubling back Snaresbrook from Woodford so only about ten minutes gained, which you more than lose on whichever standard start/end you can't do.

My first run was a High Barnet start/Cockfosters finish which worked but without a lot to spare

The one thing going for an Epping start. You can time it for a perfect Hainaut loop.