25/01/12 Iain and Glen's Attempt

[Iain]

Hey guys!

Brief report as my water tank sprang a leak - wonderful timing, just when I need to sleep half the day I have people coming who will be making a right racket. I'll do a more detailed report later, but a brief summary.

So much better doing a tube challenge with someone - bouncing ideas off each other, chatting, laughing about stuff. Myles was a total star as support, although he did talk about food he was going to eat a lot

Although the route was solid I think, as large chunks worked very well, the Met cost us a bit as Andi posted and then problems with a bus at the top of the map put us further down, meaning we just missed a 30 minute down MHE by about a minute. Having said that Myles reported that it never appeared even though the indicator board was giving times. Maybe it had a fault at MHE or something happened to the driver. That put us about 45 mins down. We kept around that, more slick changes even though we were off our schedule.

Plan was to come up the left hand side of the map, up to Rayners and then do the NW corner on the Met. District was playing up around Ealing Broadway costing us the time we'd got back. Narrowly missed the bus at Rayners which would have got us onto the Met train 45 mins down. Long wait for the next one and an hour down. This was still okay if Watford worked as by some strange quirk both 45 down and 60 down lead to the same finish time (18:11). Missed Watford by a narrow margin, the way the Met works that added another 36 minutes to our finish time (18:47) and then the train to our final station was about 13 minutes late. So - just squeezed under 19 hours.

Anyway - PB for me (although not by as much as I'd hoped, theoretical time was just over 17 hours), and a completion for Glen, which was great to be part of

[Nigel]

Well done guys. I've updated the top times table in Tube Challenge Chat area to show your achievement - now the 39th fastest on the current configuration.

[Iain]

Thanks Nigel - I'm sure I've got a faster time in me! From my point of view yesterday was about recording a 17:30ish or below time and then really going all out for a stonking time. Maybe I'll just do that or maybe give this route another go, apart from Watford I think it's solid.

Yesterday still taught me plenty - we had an amusing incident with the buses up at Stanmore, will say more later

[MylesHSG]

Having sat at Watford for a couple of hours I think I may have found something interesting.

(When I say left of right platforms I mean what it is when your coming in on the train)

If the train you are on is going into the right hand side platform i.e it has to cross over onto the other side, the train that is in watford has to wait slightly longer for its green signal. It is an almost perfect double back and on the 3 occasions I witnessed this you probably could have stuck your foot in or a support person could have stuck their foot in and it would have been a perfect change.

If the train you are on is going into the left hand side platform, the train at watford gets a green signal about 45 seconds before the train coming in stops and opens the doors. This happened exactly the same of the 3 occasions I saw this.

[Steeevooo]

Is that not quite obvious though? If a train has to wait for another to cross the points in front of it, then it is obviously going to be held a bit longer than a train that has a clear junction...?

[Iain]

Definitely interesting, but unless there's a regular pattern to it (i.e. trains at certain times are always the same) you couldn't really use it to help plan a route.

Uxbridge actually wasn't too bad yesterday, although we did get held outside for a couple of minutes. That seemed to be the story of the day.

[MylesHSG]

Yes Stevo, unfortunatly the JP says its a 1 minute connection in all cases.

[Iain]

I'm pretty sure our incoming train was late by a minute even when we got on at Moor Park

[Iain]

Another day, another full network challenge. Only this time with TheRaven (Glen) and support man Myles. Woohoo – no boredom with no-one to chat to, coffee brought to us (I realised that I normally drink a lot of coffee and it can be tough to get on a TC without losing time, so it’s not surprising I feel like death after ten hours without caffeine) and food. Well, talk of food by Myles, who delighted the hungry travellers with tales of what he was going to eat while waiting. Mind you he did introduce me to Mountain Dew – very welcome!

Anyway, SW corner start to get an early KenO. Once again the first train started late meaning the first change (that had gone wrong on all my attempts from different start points) was in jeopardy. It worked this time – just! The first hour went fine, we were due to switch to The District at Baron’s Court to pick up West Ken and run to KenO. We were a minute or two down again, and we saw the train on the adjacent platform at Hammersmith, so made the change there. It was a bit of a close call with the doors, but we made it, ran to KenO with time to spare, and then that crawled round to Earl’s Court and was held for ages outside. This meant we got to our next connection late, but thanks to a bit of juggling I’d come up with the day before, the next train worked too, although we were sweating on it. Everything went well for the next hour, the run from Kenton to Northwick Park was done in record time, and then the Met problems hit us. We had a Preston Road double back planned and the departure board at Northwick Park suggested this still worked, but the information was inaccurate and we headed into Uxbridge late. We got to West Ruislip one train down. No problems, we could postpone a quick double back to Warren Street that brought us into synch with a Hainault loop train and be back to our timetable, but without Goodge and Warren Street. It all worked a treat, and we planned to collect the Northern line stations when we came back centrally on the Victoria line, then Glen came up with the idea to do the middle northern bit in reverse, which looked tidier. I 100% agreed with this so we went for it even though it was off our timetable. The slight downside (although generally it went smoothly) was that neither of us had looked at the connection in reverse direction. So – pelt out of Edgware (only just realised it doesn’t have an “e” in the middle) onto one of the buses (186 I think) right outside the door and we were on our way…straight into the bus garage. I don’t think it cost us a bus, and we got the right bus this time to Canons Park. Ten minutes or so for the connection, so all in all a pretty good transfer.

We’d anticipated being one MHE train down but somehow it drifted out to two – not sure how as it all seemed pretty slick except for the bus cock-up. Anyway – up to Finchley Central, Myles told us the train was due to leave in five minutes, we were due to arrive in a couple, all good even though we’d lost another train. Still not really sure why, just general slowness – had a few holds outside of stations. Anyway – for some reason the MHE train never came back for that shuttle run, so we were greeted by an empty platform, so we were another train down.

Due to a quirk in the timetable in the NW corner, the 30, 45 and 60 minute down schedules all finish with a 18:09 time, so it actually didn’t make any difference. The bus to Cockfosters crawled, seemingly in the wrong gear, and I seriously wondered if we might need to get out and push. That took us close to an hour down. We spent the next few hours gaining and losing, and we got back to about 40 minutes down by Chiswick Park thanks to a very slick Wimbledon to Morden change, a good H&C and some nice stuff around Stockwell (especially Brixton – ten seconds or under for the reverse – I would call it a sexy change but that would suggest that for me sex lasts less than ten seconds). The only problem was at Elephant and Castle when there was only one train there, it was indicated as next train out. Green signal, “ready” on the departure board, no movement…no movement… then I wandered down the carriage to look across to the other platform. Meanwhile, another train had come in and gone. I saw it just as the doors shut. So – wrong information, no announcement – and it cost us five minutes. Really wish in spite of the info saying our train was next to go that we’d left Myles watching the “next train” board, or done it ourselves as we had loads of time to move the couple of carriages down to the position for our next change.

Things started to go wrong a bit from Chiswick Park – the trains into Ealing Broadway were backlogged and we caught the brunt of this, slowing us down further. We checked for a bus between Rayners and North Harrow but just missed that – it would have left us 45 minutes down meaning that even with a miss on the quick change at Watford we’d still finish in 18:09. We were now dependent on getting the Watford train; we didn’t, so were knocked down another 36 minutes to 18:45 projected finish. The final insult was a thirteen minute delay waiting to go up to our finish at Amersham, we knew we were going to be tight on the nineteen hour mark, and we were watching the stop watch creep ever closer as the train pulled into the platform. We made it – just! 18:59:55. Phew!

[MylesHSG]

Was just one of those days where there wasn't one huge delay, just lots of small ones which add up in the NW corner.

[Iain]

Just realised that if it hadn't been for that late start (and ensuing nevewracking wait to see if we made the connection) then we'd have been a minute or two over nineteen hours

[The Raven]

Big thanks to Myles (for coffee and support) to and Iain (company and a sofa to sleep on).

I defiantly in the wars on Wednesday! Firstly, fell right on my arse moving up the train at Northolt and scrapped by elbow, then literally dived onto the train at Brixton and slammed into the Victoria train floor and ended up getting a random nose bleed at Moor Park.

The day was full on some fantastic changes that all seemed to happen all at once followed by by one crap change. We suffered phantom trains, trains that left in the wrong order and tons of waits outside stations. IF we hadn't stopped outside Rayners Lane we would perhaps have got the the H10 and got THAT Watford train. Oh well, a man can dream!

The bus from High Barnet was deplorable. We seemed to go about 5mph up the hills! Is it always like that?

Myles was on top form and cheered up during the day, no end. It's a shame that the Watford driver could not be persuaded to leave 20 seconds later for love nor money!

I'm very happy to have a completion now. I'm tempted by a "Do or Die" route and going after the record!

Something useful I found was that you can park at Hounslow East all day for about £4 which maybe useful for a Heathrow start

[Iain]

Best (misheard) quote of the day when two of Glen's snack foods got mixed up in his bag: "Oh no, my nuts have got stuck in the flaps" (actually flapjacks).

[MylesHSG]

Yes and there was a phantom MHE train. I was at Finchley Central at 13:40. Went to get 3 lattes and got back about 14:00. A minute or so before your train got in it said 5 minutes. A few seconds before your train came it then disapeared off the board.

[Iain]

I knew Myles had offered him money, I didn't know he'd offered him love