Another historical All Stations

[Beary]

In Underground News 500 (August 2003) there is an old report about another All Stations Challenge:

Barry Price, 19, of Marlow spent GBP 54 in fares and took 18 hours 30 minutes and 42 seconds to visit every Underground station and travel the entire system in July 1965.

Would be interesting to know whether the entire system also included the Watford Curve.

[Sillert, V.I.]

I can remember travelling on the tube in 1965.

GBP 54 was a lot of money then; the only way I can imagine spending that much on fares in a day would be to take an awful lot of taxis.

The fare structure was different. 10/- (50p) would buy you a "Blue Rover" ticket, which was roughly equivalent to a Zones 1-6 LU card (most tubes & buses, but not British Rail), but this could only be bought on Saturdays & Sundays. So if Barry did this on a weekday, as would seem likely, he'd have to have bought quite a few single tickets, but with each one costing a few shillings, he'd have had to buy well over a hundred to spend that much!

I wonder what his route was, and how he actually did it? If he was 19 in 1965, he'd be 60 today, so maybe we could find him & ask him!

[Oracle]

I am not sure whether he could have done as others did 20+ years ago, and that is go to the Commercial Department at 55 Broadway...a special ticket covering all lines was available? 1965...Hounslow West had lost its District service by then. We moved from Feltham to HW that year, and I started at Isleworth Grammar in September '66 going by tube to Osterley then walk.

[Going Underground]

I am not sure whether he could have done as others did 20+ years ago, and that is go to the Commercial Department at 55 Broadway...a special ticket covering all lines was available? 1965...Hounslow West had lost its District service by then. We moved from Feltham to HW that year, and I started at Isleworth Grammar in September '66 going by tube to Osterley then walk.

Hurray, someone older than me on this forum

[Oracle]

I was born August '55, and we moved to Hounslow West in '65. However when my Nan was alive we used to go and see here then Mum would take us up to Town on the Undergroumd. I then started commuting to school September 1966. Then in 1973 HW to Holborn to work.

I only ever used to use Red Rovers for bus number crunching, bought from Hounslow Garage, as you couldn't get then at tube stations, and Green Rovers on Country Buses, say from Staines to Woking, etc. However was there not a Twin Rover that covered buses and tubes?

As I said when LURS was organising the "Roving" as we called it in the 1980s, Rover tickets were not suitable as they did not cover the Bucks/Herts/Essex sections and so the Commercial Department had to be approached in advance to obtain a special ticket for all Underground lines, plus you would need a Red Rover I suppose! How the heck everyone coped with BR as it then was I have no idea. The very first attempt to set a record in 1980 after a considerable lull was won by returning back from Richmond and so no Hatton X to Feltham for Richmond.

[hwolge]

Oracle, you are about my age then! I remember my very first trip to London without my parents in 1975 when I was 16. Back then there existed a ticket called "Go As You Please"-card. They came in varieties of number of days and (I think) number of zones. They covered at least Underground and buses. I assume they never covered the full system though...