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Iain wrote:Some of your runs look tight unless you're Mo Farah.

I might try to rejig Uxbridge - trains often get held outside Uxbridge so tight changes are a gamble, but nearly ten minutes is wasting time.

I've tried throwing it around 50 different ways, but the only real way would be to get the next train out of Chesham (06:47:30 instead of 06:30), and I don't know how to make up that 17 mins without major route changes later on in the plan. Any ideas?

The answer may be to make major route changes if it matters that much. Sometimes it's the only way.

If a completion's your main aim though, I'd just leave it. A quick estimate says you don't have too much slack at the end, so starting later will exacerbate that.

It has been known for people to double back the whole Heathrow branch and then do Richmond, as that branch goes on later.

Or just do the route, find out what doesn't work and rejig if you can make regular attempts

RJSRdg wrote:

Iain wrote:

Steeevooo wrote:

Iain wrote:

FelixJ20000 wrote:

Iain wrote:As I understand it, no, as they need to get trains out of Lille depot and back in.

Would I replacement bus service be legit for an attempt?

Your guess is as good as mine, but since the rules make reference to "track" and "doors" I'd go for no.

I wasn#t tube challenging back then, but I seem to recall a time where you had to use one to get to part of Heathrow

Indeed!! My first GWR (with Sam, the one that broke Geoff and Neil's by 5 seconds) required us to visit T4 by replacement bus.

That was what I was thinking of I think.

Question is, would it be legit when there's a timetabled tube service at certain times of the day?

No, all stations must be visited by London Underground. The T4 replacement bus was a rare exception - I think someone at Guinness was having a 'funny five minutes'!

Also I think this 'rail replacement service' only operates on those weekdays when there is a major event at Olympia that would have justified a 'exhibition' District line service until a year or so ago (e.g. the Beer festival and the Horse Show).

It's running for the Ideal Home expo

I mis-remembered your route timing - you can afford to drop back a train or two and still have some slack

Iain wrote:It's running for the Ideal Home expo

I mis-remembered your route timing - you can afford to drop back a train or two and still have some slack

Yeah there's a few places where I can recover, but not many. I could just go for completion, I know, but that's not as much of a challenge and I have quite the competitive streak

If you're that competitive then work it all out for yourself (and therefore take the full kudos for doing so) as opposed to asking everyone else how to do it!!

Steeevooo wrote:If you're that competitive then work it all out for yourself (and therefore take the full kudos for doing so) as opposed to asking everyone else how to do it!!

I just asked for some advice; you have a point

Steeevooo wrote:If you're that competitive then work it all out for yourself (and therefore take the full kudos for doing so) as opposed to asking everyone else how to do it!!

Well said at last, the spoon feeding on the forum is beyond belief in the last couple of years...

Yes, I understand the dilemma between wanting to do your own route and taking advice.

The first route I came up with was based on Labyrinth but with a modification to get round the reduced Olympia service since Labyrinth was first run. Remarkably that amendment brought the route down to equalling the then world-record time. Sadly the couple of recce runs I did on it failed miserably pretty early on so I never really got round to seeing if the whole thing worked.

When I posted the results of my recce runs, another challenger started dropping heavy hints for a quicker route he had (which he was prepared to give to me as he'd found an even quicker one!). I didn't really want to take it off him, preferring to arrive at something myself, but I was able to figure out most of it from his hints and he just corrected me on a couple of minor points. Then I tweaked it to make that into a route capable of (just) beating the new WR, but there are some very tight changes involved I'm still keen to try to iron out if I can.

I also don't think there's anything wrong with attempting to 'reverse engineer' another route to see if it can produce anything useful. I'm pretty sure I managed to figure out the starting and finishing points and times of the current record route - which makes the order of some of the other stations obvious(!) - but there are still another 250 odd in the middle to work out!

And certainly I don't see anything wrong with picking up hints like 'Where can I get food?' 'Where are the loos?' or even the odd bit of advice regarding some of the OSIs.

RJSRdg wrote:Yes, I understand the dilemma between wanting to do your own route and taking advice.

The first route I came up with was based on Labyrinth but with a modification to get round the reduced Olympia service since Labyrinth was first run. Remarkably that amendment brought the route down to equalling the then world-record time. Sadly the couple of recce runs I did on it failed miserably pretty early on so I never really got round to seeing if the whole thing worked.

When I posted the results of my recce runs, another challenger started dropping heavy hints for a quicker route he had (which he was prepared to give to me as he'd found an even quicker one!). I didn't really want to take it off him, preferring to arrive at something myself, but I was able to figure out most of it from his hints and he just corrected me on a couple of minor points. Then I tweaked it to make that into a route capable of (just) beating the new WR, but there are some very tight changes involved I'm still keen to try to iron out if I can.

I also don't think there's anything wrong with attempting to 'reverse engineer' another route to see if it can produce anything useful. I'm pretty sure I managed to figure out the starting and finishing points and times of the current record route - which makes the order of some of the other stations obvious(!) - but there are still another 250 odd in the middle to work out!

And certainly I don't see anything wrong with picking up hints like 'Where can I get food?' 'Where are the loos?' or even the odd bit of advice regarding some of the OSIs.

Loos - there's a map I've learnt! Can anyone offer food advice - beside people meeting up

FelixJ20000 wrote:
Loos - there's a map I've learnt! Can anyone offer food advice - beside people meeting up

I think there was another thread about food and loos a couple of months back which may have the answers you're looking for.

Just an announcement - I've got a PLAN for 15:39:00, we'll see how it pans out...

Don't you dare do it until I've managed my 15:44!

Wow!

Have you sorted out that Leytonstone connection? I guess there must be some way of figuring it out (door holding + luck would probably work).

Good luck!