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This coming Tuesday, I technically will get my first completion of the FNC.. See, over 13 attempts I've visited 269 and all that remains now is to visit Mill Hill East, which I will do before my assessments with Greater Anglia over in Stratford. So yeah, from Tuesday I will have visited the full network with a total time of 3 years! And the rest I will figure out soon.

God damnit, I'm losing my one Tube record.

I wonder who actually holds the record for the longest time to visit all the stations in any configuration ...

I'm hoping to smash 3 years into the ground - hoping for 12 years! That's the amount of time since I did the first bit of track I haven't done twice (the Heathrow line from Acton Town). Will have to visit Heathrow Terminal 5 VERY CAREFULLY to avoid this becoming untrue. I've still got quite a bit left though, including Theydon Bois - Epping. I wish I didn't have that bit left though. It eats into my heart that I went to Theydon Bois and didn't bother to go the one remaining stop to Epping, even to reverse there (I was going paintballing and the centre provides a minibus from Theydon Bois).

Hang on, if you have used and private transport (car,taxi,bicycle etc) does the attempt not count?

It's a Class B, obviously!

I don't know how it counts if you don't use private transport to do the challenging bits. For example, if you decide when you get to Epping on a FNC to go out on a joyride in a car you've found outside the station for 2 hours then return there, how does that work? You don't have to declare it because the overall effect on your challenge time is the same as you sitting in the station for 2 hours, but if you do is your attempt invalid?

I visited a few stations with my dad when I was six or seven, but hadn't done a lot of them until Nov 2011 so that's a hell of a lot longer than three years

Iain wrote:I visited a few stations with my dad when I was six or seven, but hadn't done a lot of them until Nov 2011 so that's a hell of a lot longer than three years

If we're going by that then the first time I went on the tube when I was 1, apparently. I've got 17 years in that respect. But from actual challenges, par se I'm looking at 3 years, 1 month and 21 days. Start station Epping finish MHE, if I can remember I might even post the longest route, ever.

I'm looking at unique track - I haven't been to Heathrow Terminal 4 since I was that age. I have done the Highgate - Tottenham Court Road stretch recently, and the Liverpool Street - Marble Arch stretch, and the Oxford Circus - Seven Sisters (all of which I did at a younger age) recently as well.

If allowing private transport in between is allowed, then I think my time beats anything else mentioned here. My parents didn't have a car when I was born in Forest Gate, but were living in Elm Park at the time, so I was taken home on the District Line as a newborn baby. I didn't visit Heathrow T5 until I reccyed it prior to my first full network in 2011 - a gap of over 53 years. I think I have also visited every station that has ever been part of the Underground network between those two occasions - including exiting the system at Blake Hall on the Ongar branch.

But did you visit that section of District since though? The point I'm making is I have not visited the stretch of track to Heathrow Terminal 4 since the age of 5. If I were to travel that section tomorrow my time would cut down drastically - probably to somewhere around 6 years (West Acton)

Which tube station was the one that you have visited, but longest ago?

Nigel wrote:If allowing private transport in between is allowed, then I think my time beats anything else mentioned here. My parents didn't have a car when I was born in Forest Gate, but were living in Elm Park at the time, so I was taken home on the District Line as a newborn baby. I didn't visit Heathrow T5 until I reccyed it prior to my first full network in 2011 - a gap of over 53 years. I think I have also visited every station that has ever been part of the Underground network between those two occasions - including exiting the system at Blake Hall on the Ongar branch.

So you have the record, specification A

Reading the write-up of my completion back in February 2009 (http://tubeforum.co.uk/forum/index.php? ... =viewtopic), you will find this quote:

"I'm told it's possible to do in about 18 hours, but it's taken me about 18 years..."

This was an extract from my Christmas newsletter in 2008, in which I mentioned that I'd ticked off visiting every Underground station over the course of eighteen years. That was the eighteen years since I'd started ticking them off; I actually first visited a Tube station probably in 1981. So maybe I could say twenty-seven years is more accurate?

It was when my friend Nick read my newsletter and said "Eighteen hours? Why not then?" that he first planted the idea of doing the network in a day. The following two months made history in my life...

Ironically I still haven't visited MHE. So I am yet to obtain a record