tubechallenge.com

The night tube will be handy for me because whilst it may not help with the fastest time for completion, I think it may help getting a completion at all. I'm reading here that a lot of challenges fail completely, so I'm assuming that if you have trains running longer on some lines you have more flexibility over routes and completion times. Personally I am thinking of doing the challenge not to go for any records, but just to complete the thing. Moreover, I live near a Northern Line station so might even be able to get home at the end!

Also, has there been any amendment to the rules of the Challenge regarding night time running? I understand that the Challenge was only valid on weekdays, but assume that if you were undertaking it on Friday and ended up finishing after midnight it was OK as that counted as if you were on a Friday service. However now (well, eventually!) the tube is running 24 hours at the weekend, will there be some cut off point after midnight on Friday where it effectively becomes a Saturday record, so not counted? Or would it be something like if you started on a Friday it will be OK? Anyway, as I said I'm not interested in the record, but I still want to obey the rules. Also interested to hear about whether completions after midnight count at all, since it is not on the same day - or is there a 24 hour rolling clock?

Lots of questions, thanks in advance for any answers / comments.

The Tube doesn't have to be completed in a day; theoretically you could go up to the last tube, then reposition yourself with the use of night buses and continue at the start of the next day. This is, of course, inadvisable, because during the 4 hours or thereabouts in which the tube does not run, the stopwatch continues to run so you effectively get 4 hours of absolutely nothing.

Very correct!

I think because I wasn't thinking about breaking any records I got mixed up with (and hung up on) the idea of completing in a day - my version of the challenge if you like. As you say, the only object is speed so it doesn't matter about fitting it into a calendar day. Presumably this may give some options for potential journeys when the timetables come out - although as of today I can't even find a note of when the service is going to start!

I don't think you'll see one for a while either - having announced a date while there were still issues to resolve, they ended up with egg on their faces, so I doubt they'll post again until everything's nailed down - which could take a while

I don't tend to post a lot on here (primarily because I have to answer all my Countdown fan mail, which is getting rather tedious) but this has turned into a complete shambles - and in my honest opinion, the unions have held Boris et al to ransom on this topic. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but whilst they did have some valid points, both sides' handling of this is utterly appalling. It doesn't help that the RMT want more leave and more money, for instance.

Just thinking...if you did a run overnight on the right Saturday/Sunday in October, you could lose an hour off your run when the clocks go back!

RJSRdg wrote:Just thinking...if you did a run overnight on the right Saturday/Sunday in October, you could lose an hour off your run when the clocks go back!

When the clocks go forward as one less hour night tube only and the stopwatch would run through both hours!

A Challenge wrote:

RJSRdg wrote:Just thinking...if you did a run overnight on the right Saturday/Sunday in October, you could lose an hour off your run when the clocks go back!

When the clocks go forward as one less hour night tube only and the stopwatch would run through both hours!

I hope that TfL test all their computer systems thoroughly, especially Oyster, before Night Tube starts, to deal with the change between GMT and BST. On the last Sunday of October, you could validly have a journey that starts at 01:55 (BST) and ends at 01:05 (GMT) - how would that be dealt with? Similarly when the clocks go forward in March a journey could appear to be an hour longer than it was and pass the maximum allowed time. I would hope that in the database times are logged as GMT/UTC year-round, which would avoid most problems.

michael_churchill wrote:I hope that TfL test all their computer systems thoroughly, especially Oyster, before Night Tube starts, to deal with the change between GMT and BST. On the last Sunday of October, you could validly have a journey that starts at 01:55 (BST) and ends at 01:05 (GMT) - how would that be dealt with? Similarly when the clocks go forward in March a journey could appear to be an hour longer than it was and pass the maximum allowed time. I would hope that in the database times are logged as GMT/UTC year-round, which would avoid most problems.

For ticketing purposes, the railway "day" ends at 04:29...Though the end of the Oyster "day" on NR is staggered between 00:01 and 04:29 so as not to overload back office systems by having every station attempting a simultaneous "end of day".

For night challenge purposes, I'd suggest logging times in the same timezone all the way through, and including a note to that effect in the log.

I saw the Picc night tube livery today, very swish

Going Underground wrote:I saw the Picc night tube livery today, very swish

So is the plan to use separate trains for the night-time services? I hadn't thought about that, but I suppose it makes sense. Day-time trains can be stabled according to current patterns and night-time trains work completely independently. If you have the same train running 24 hours you have no time for maintenance.

However, that means more trains and I didn't think TfL has a lot of spare capacity

I don't see why a Piccadilly line train sporting a livery promoting Night Tube means that there will be distinct fleets for "Day" tube and "Night" tube? The same fleet will be used - differentiating between "Day" and "Night" tube is a bit of a misnomer - "Night" tube is essentially just an extension of the current timetables.

No, it will be the same trains. It would cost far too much to buy a whole new fleet of trains that would only be used two nights a week!

The night tube isn't that frequent so only about 25% of the total fleet will be needed to run the service, the rest are still available for maintenance.

Steeevooo / greatkingrat, I bow to your expertise.

I now look at the WTT for the Piccadilly line and the Scheduled Trains In Service "Snapshots" table show a maximum of 78 at 0900 Monday to Friday, falling to 51 at 2400 and 35 at 0600 on Saturday. So I guess the Night Tube requirement will be in that 35 to 51 range? Possibly even some of the 51 will stay in service longer and some of the 35 will start earlier?