Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

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Lunaticonthegrass
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Joined: 18 Nov 2019, 22:47
Location: North of Watford

Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by Lunaticonthegrass »

My girlfriend and I did our first attempt at FNC a few months ago. What follows is an account I wrote shortly afterwards which I then posted on my own Facebook Profile. Meanwhile, my other half found out about alternative challenges for us to try, which led to me finding this forum. I don't want to stop challenging! It's too much fun! Apologies for explaining a lot of things you Tube nerds already know, but this was originally aimed at a different audience.

.....................

It started when I was about 6 or 7 years old. I got my hands on a tourist guide to London, which my parents owned, full of all the information the average tourist to our Capital might need. I loved every page of that book, but the 2 pages I loved the most were the 2 pages of the inside back cover, which showed a map. Not a wholly accurate map. A map, in fact, which had its geography distorted to show in formation more clearly. A map of bright, bold colours and weird, funny names – Boston Manor, Temple, White City, Oval, Ongar. It was, or course, a map of the London Underground Railway system.

It was the start of my rather romantic view of the Tube. Yes, I know it’s hot, dirty, usually crammed with people and often late or – worse – broken down, but I always enjoyed (and still do enjoy) travelling on the Tube whenever in London.

2 decades after my first encounter, in the early summer of 2017, my girlfriend Casey and I decided to visit every station on the Underground network in a day. I myself can’t remember exactly how we agreed to do this, but Casey tells it something like this –

The Tube came up in conversation (quite possibly we were discussing travel plans for an upcoming visit to London) and Casey mentioned that there was a world record for the shortest time taken to visit all the stations on the network. I replied that I already knew about this record. Casey suggested that we should have an attempt at setting our own record and, since this was a wonderful, mad idea, I agreed in an instant.

However it actually happened, I soon found myself searching the internet for information on the challenge, what the record time was, advice on how to do it. Naturally I ended up planning my own route, as I’ve always enjoyed route planning and creating things. This led to me testing sections of the route to find out what it would be like, and then creating a spreadsheet with all the required information.

I should explain at this point that visiting all the stations in a single day is not just a case of sitting on trains all day. I’ll go into more detail in another note (brace yourselves!) but it involves a lot of train changes and running not only within stations but in-between stations as well. It’s also important to know which carriage to be in on any given train and also which doors to use, so that crowds can be beaten and swift connections made.

We had initially decided to attempt the challenge in the summer of 2018, but due to Casey taking a job in Japan we had to postpone this until, after an absence of 20 months, she arrived in the UK at the end of August 2019. The date had been set for just over a week later Thursday 5th September 2019. We had waited over 2 years, I had devised 3 different routes before settling on my fourth (see the other note as to why), Casey had taken up running to train for the day, we had special t-shirts made and we were both excited but not quite believing that the time had finally come.

The day started in a small AirBNB room in East Bedfont, about a 20-minute walk from Hatton Cross station, the last one before Heathrow Airport on the South-West branch of the Piccadilly line. We creeped out of the house at 4:30 in the morning, dawn still well over an hour away, in running gear, trying to keep ourselves warm in the cold night air. I carried a rucksack which contained 2 water bottles, an assortment of food bought the night before from a convenience store and a few sides of A4 paper stapled together with details of the route. We also had our inevitable mobile phones (we are millennials after all), but they served 2 important purposes. Casey’s was to be used as a stopwatch to time journey. Mine was to be used to take pictures and videos of our adventure. We’re not regular online bloggers or YouTube stars, but it seemed like a fun idea to create a video of the day. (This video may never come into existence, but I for one hope it does.)

At about 4:50 we reached Hatton Cross station, a concrete box with a bus station on one side and a major road junction on the other. Despite the early hour there were already a fair number of people about – I guess that comes with being so close to the country’s busiest airport. We did the first video clip – explaining our goal for the day – before we went to buy 2 day-tickets. I had problems with my card in the ticket machine, but the assistant on duty advised that I clean the chip and tried again. It worked fine, and so ended a problem I’d been having every time I went to London for many months. We took the stairs down to the platform and waited for the 4:59 to Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3 via Heathrow Terminal 4, the first train of the day.

We didn’t count Hatton Cross as the first station we visited. We knew that we would be going back there in about half an hour’s time. So, we started Casey’s stopwatch as the doors closed at Heathrow Terminal 4. At 5:04, about 2 minutes behind schedule, we were off!

We only went 1 more stop on that train before we had to change at Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3, in order to get to Heathrow Terminal 5. It was something of a slow start, waiting at T5 for about 10 minutes, but we got on the train bound for Cockfosters and headed East. Coming above ground just after Hounslow West we could see the faint glimmer of dawn beginning to break. I think that both of us were too tired to truly realise that it had started at this point.

It was at Hammersmith that we met with our first problem. We ran off the train, through the ticket barriers and across the main road to the Hammersmith station on the Hammersmith and City and Circle line. (Yes, there are 2 completely separate stations called Hammersmith and they must both be visited.) As I put my ticket into the barrier at the second station an error message flashed up, telling me to seek assistance. Assistance was duly found and we make our connection with no problem. But I’d used my day ticket twice and it was not working properly. I would have to pass through many ticket barriers today so this would become annoying. Especially if it resulted in us missing a train. Fortunately, Casey’s ticket worked fine.

The first major objective of our day was to visit Kensington (Olympia). It is the hardest station to visit on the Underground network, on account of having a mere 7 trains a day – 5 very early in the morning and 2 mid-evening. We got our first bus of the day from High Street Kensington to Olympia and made it to the platform with 2 minutes to spare. Great timing! But there was no train in sight. As it’s a terminating station I expected a train to be sitting in the platform waiting for its departure time. But there was no train and no live departure board telling us what to expect. The only thing we could do was wait.

After 5 nerve-racking minutes – which seemed a lot longer than they were – a District line train appeared in the distance and pulled into the platform. I was hoping for a swift departure, but we finally left Olympia about 10 minutes after we had planned to. This must have been the service after the one we had wanted to take. The one we wanted must have been cancelled at short notice with no announcement – a common trick I believe. I think it’s all to do with getting trains going in the morning, and there is benefit if there is flexibility in the timetable. But I wasn’t too annoyed. We had ticked off the hardest station.

With the sun now fully above the horizon we made our way to Wimbledon, where we jumped on the Croydon tram for a few stops to help us get to Morden. The tram was fun. We both wish we could have stayed on it for longer, but we had our first serious run of the day ahead, as we made it to the southern extreme of the network, ironically on the Northern line.

Casey had been running for several months in preparation for the challenge, but I’m well over 6 feet tall with very long limbs, making running far more natural for me. We went at a slower pace then what I had been used to on practice runs, but this didn’t bother me. I knew it would happen and I knew that she was trying her best.

Into Morden station, and the tanoy announced that the next train to leave would be from platform 5. I was then rather annoyed when I saw a train pull out of one of the other platforms before ours. I should have looked at the departure board at the top of the stairs. But we were on the more a few moments later.

It was about 7:30 by now, on a Thursday morning, and by South Wimbledon, the next station on the line, our carriage was already quite full. This was going to be a tricky section, trying to constantly beat the commuter crowds when making connections. But this is where the value of test runs showed itself. We were at the right point (or close enough) for every change we did. Changing to the Victoria line at Stockwell (on our second pass through) we could see the train we wanted as we pulled in – just a tiny sprint down a corridor away. We made the train and left the station in probably less time than if we’d have stayed on the same train. Even at Victoria, which would be packed with people at this hour, we flew off the train and up the escalators, making the sub-surface line westbound platform just as a train was pulling in. We then had great fun passing down the length of the crowded train (the new rolling stock allows for seamless passage between the carriages) before we got off at Sloane Square to head back in the opposite direction.

The only thing left to do during rush hour was to take the Circle line to Aldgate and the run a few hundred metres to Aldgate East. Once on a Circle line train I thought that we were home and dry, as the platform displays told of a train to Upminster a minute or two behind ours. It would be tight but we should be able to catch it at Aldgate East. But there was one final trap which I had not foreseen. Arriving at Aldgate, the stairs to the ticket hall were almost overloaded with people. A service in the opposite direction must have pulled in about 30 seconds before, and there was no way that we could battle our way through those crowds. We tried, of course, but to no avail. We still ran like hell to Aldgate East in the hope of catching the train we wanted. My ticket played up again at Aldgate East and I frantically showed it to the assistant standing by. He asked me why I was in such a rush, but I didn’t have time to explain as I could see an Eastbound train pulling in. I dashed down the stairs, fighting against the crowds heading the opposite way, making it onto the platform just as the doors were closing. If I had been on my own, I could have made a final sprint and probably have made it. But I was aware that Casey was somewhere behind me and she would never make it. Anyway, it didn’t matter that much as that service was only going as far as Dagenham East. We got on a train a few minutes later to Barking, with the next Upminster service about 4 minutes behind that.

At Barking we found that there was a little kiosk on the platform we were using. As mentioned, we did have some food with us but we didn’t know if it would be enough, so decided to buy some more, eventually settling on 2 vegetable samosas. The man behind the counter asked us if we wanted them warming up, which would have been really nice, but at this moment our train was pulling in, so we had to take them as they were.

Out at Upminster, we were running across the overbridge between platforms and looked down to see a C2C mainline train at the platform, about to head back into London. Down the stairs we ran, smoothly made the train and in doing so spent less than a minute at this station.

Back at West Ham we had a long run within the station to get across to the Jubilee line. The Jubilee section of the station was only added 20 years ago and is practically a separate station, linked by a long, raised corridor. By now we had come to realise that Casey is much more of a sprinter than a distance runner, which should be very ideal for station running. But she’s yet to master the art of dodging around crowds. Whereas I, who practically live on public transport, have few problems with it. We missed a train by moments, but the Jubilee line is the Jubilee line, and there was another train 1 minute later. We had just enough time for a selfie before we went back underground.

It was nearly 11am when we resurfaced, at Earl’s Court, having made several good connections in the labyrinth under the city centre and now running about 7 minutes behind schedule. The train signage system for the District line was playing up, but the trains we actually running reasonably well. We made it down to Richmond (remembering the limerick about the lady from Kew as we passed through the penultimate station on the branch) but then didn’t see any information about when the next train back out was. On both of my test visits to Richmond there had been a wait of about 7 minutes here, so I assumed that it would be ok to use the station toilets and refill water bottles. Then the train pulled out after about 3 minutes and we weren’t on it. Annoying, but this wasn’t a serious attempt at breaking any records so we weren’t distraught. Still, my planned route had a 2-minute wait at Richmond, so I should have paid attention to that. We toyed with the idea of taking the Overground service back to Gunnersbury and then running to Chiswick Park, but decided that it wouldn’t save us any time. So, we got on the next District line service which ran after that, putting us back at 20 minutes behind schedule.

The next part of the day went rather slowly. We watched a Central line train pull out of Ealing Broadway just as our train was coming, giving us a 7-minute wait. There was a similar length wait at the quiet North Ealing station, having run there from West Acton. We arrived at Uxbridge and ran to the other train waiting there, but noticed that the platform indicators, which show the next train to depart, were giving the number of an unoccupied platform. We assumed that, like the District line information system, they weren’t operating as they should. But after a wait of a few minutes, a third train arrived, pulling into that platform. Surely though, the last train in wouldn’t be the first train out? But this is the London Underground, where anything can happen. We ran to this new train, got settled in seats and it turned our that we made the correct decision, as it was the first train to leave. But we’d still waited here for nearly 10 minutes. And we then had yet another 7-minute wait at West Ruislip. Yet we were still 20 minutes behind schedule, so we hadn’t lost any time here. I guess that this is a section of the network where the services don’t synch up nicely. We dug lunch out of our rucksack – 2 Ginsters pasties which had been squashed very flat – and relaxed.

By about 2pm we were heading east on the Victoria line. Once at Walthamstow Central we had to somehow make it across to the Central line to then deal with the remote Epping and Hainault sections of the network. The easiest way is to run 3.4km to Snaresbrook, but Casey wasn’t keen on the idea by this point. Instead we got a bus to Leyton, but this was always going to be a slow way of doing things. It’s not very direct and the traffic was inevitably heavy. But there was a possible advantage of going to Leyton. The line between Hainault and Woodford has only 1 train every 20 minutes. If there was a Hainault Loop train not far away then we would take it, if not then we would to the Epping branch first and hope for better luck with the timing at Woodford. We arrived at Leyton to find that the next Loop train was 10 minutes away. A difficult decision, but we decided to chance it and do the Epping branch first.

Epping is not in London. It is not even a suburb of London. It is outside the M25 in rural Essex, and it was nice to see late summer fields, rather than rows of faceless houses or the blackness of a tunnel, through the tube carriage windows. This section is one of the very few bits of the London Underground that I hadn’t visited prior to this day. I’d like to say that it was refreshing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the delays we’d had, especially the extra 10 minutes or so we added by using the bus to get to the Central line. Having said that, running might not have been any faster at this stage.

But things got twice as bad at Woodford. On arrival, the display said that the next train to Hainault was 10 minutes away. I can’t remember all the details – I’d hit the low point of the day by now – but the time kept getting later and later. Eventually a train came off the Hainault branch, all the passengers got out, and the train went into the return sidings beyond the station. The waiting continued before – finally – it pulled back into Woodford station and we, along with many others, got on. As we left, I checked the time and was rather surprised to find that we had been waiting there for half an hour! So, 20 minutes more than we originally expected. I suspect that there was a cancelled service and they didn’t tell us. But that incredibly long wait, coupled with the delays we already had, meant that we were now exactly 1 hour behind where we should be. I was very glad to leave this section of the network.

Weirdly, I was feeling optimistic. We would shortly be moving to the final hard section – the Mill Hill East branch of the Northern Line, with 1 train every 15 minutes. My timetable had us down to make a handful of tight connections in town and then have a wait at Finchley Central (for the MHE shuttle service) of less than a minute. Remember, we were exactly 1 hour behind schedule and trains tend to run at the same minutes past each hour for most of the day. If it all went to plan we wouldn’t make up any time, but I’d be very pleased that we hadn’t been done over by every hard section on the network in the same day.

Despite getting stuck at the ticket barriers at Chancery Lane (there was no assistant available), being one carriage too far forward arriving into Moorgate and then having to tell people to stand on the right-hand side of the escalator (well, it had to happen at least once, didn’t it!), it all went to plan. Soon we were heading north on a High Barnet train. By now it was 5pm, so the train was busy with commuters once more. We must have looked very out of place.

We came out of the tunnel at East Finchley, and one stop later we were at Finchley Central, where we needed to change. The train we needed should have been on the adjacent platform as we pulled in, but it wasn’t there. If fact it was 10 minutes away. I realised what had happened. The Mill Hill East shuttle operates for most of the day, but in the morning and evening peak times the frequency increases, with some services even going to and from central London and beyond. We were in the evening peak now, and consequently out of synch. Whilst waiting we bought food from a shop just outside the station and then the MHE train turned up.

We stepped onto the platform at Mill Hill East, enjoying the early evening sun, and taking another selfie to celebrate getting here. We got on the same train back – there is only one platform at MHE, and not much else – and before we knew it, we were back at Finchley Central. In fact, it came as something of a surprise to me, and not a nice one. There was a train ready to go up to High Barnet, but our train was heading down into the town centre. So rather than a simple hop across the platform we needed to very quickly run over the footbridge between the 2 platforms, and we were in completely the wrong carriage for this as well. The train doors flew open, and we ran as best as we could, but the High Barnet train pulled out long before we could catch it. Even if we had been in the right carriage, we would never have made that train. It was an 8-minute wait until the next train.

It was at around this time that I stopped keeping track of the schedule and how far behind or ahead (as if that might ever happen!) we were. We left Finchley Central station for a second time to buy some sandwiches for a dinner of sorts and then headed up to High Barnet.

The next hour or so was rather uneventful. We passed though King’s Cross St. Pancras for the third time and also ticked off one of the most famous Underground stations – Mornington Crescent. But for us, the game was not over, merely reaching the final stages.

Up at Edgware, the other northern terminus of the Northern line, we ran out of the train station and into the adjacent bus station to find that a bus we wanted was already waiting at its stand. There was barely any delay before we headed west towards Cannons Park on the Jubilee line, the skies now going into a wonderful red sunset. We got off the bus by the station, just as a northbound train rumbled over the bridge above us. Could we make that train? We ran across the road, dodging cars as we went, sprinted into the station, headed up the stairs, once again battling the commuters heading home for the night, and we made the train. We turned around at Stanmore and, for the last time, headed towards the town centre.

It finally happened at Swiss Cottage. A group of 4 teenagers, probably all about 17, got into our carriage and proceeded to ask us what ‘’Tube Challenge’ was. We had been getting funny looks from people all day, but was at 8pm, after 15 hours on the move, had anybody actually asked us anything about it. Casey and I explained what we were up to, and then answered some of the inevitable questions we always get asked. They seemed genuinely interested. One of them even said to another “you’re doing this with me.”. Good luck with your own attempt, whoever you 4 were! We would like to have stayed and chatted more about it, but we were coming into Baker Street station and yet another change of trains awaited the 2 of us.

Reaching the Bakerloo northbound, there was a feeling of stillness and silence. Rather earie, especially this late in the day. For a moment I was worried. The Bakerloo line is not renowned for its good service and I knew that things might have gone wrong yet again. But the departure board said the best news – there would be a train to Harrow & Wealdstone in 1 minute. The departure board proved to be accurate and we soon started on what I felt was the final leg of the day – the stretch to the extreme ends of the Metropolitan line.

By the time we came back above ground at Queen’s Park it had gone dark. We were both very tired and didn’t pay much attention as we passed through the all the stations on our way to the top of the line. There were some fiddly bits of the route to do in this part of the map, but after a while we ran into North Harrow station and up to the westbound platform. All the running was complete. There we just 11 stations left.

But the Underground wasn’t going to give up on its old tricks, not even this late in the day. The Metropolitan line had been fine 10 minutes ago when we left it at West Harrow, but now there was no sign of any trains heading out of London. We had heard earlier in the day that there were delays in this section due to new signalling, but I thought they had them all sorted out. Maybe the new system is rather temperamental.

Whatever the reason, the pair of us were stuck on the westbound platform at North Harrow. It was cold, there were very few other people around, the station felt abandoned and so did we. It was 10pm by now and we still had the prospect of an hour’s travelling ahead of us – that’s how spread out the far reaches of the Met line are. So we were looking at an 11pm finish if a train turned up right away, which it didn’t and then worries of how to get all the way back to Heathrow so late at night. I mentioned to Casey that it might be sensible to call it a day and try again another time. But Casey would have none of it. I’m glad that she knows when to make the right decision.

We waited. We saw a train head west through the station without stopping, a rare occurrence, which was a little annoying but it was bound for Amersham and we needed to get to Watford first. We saw about 4 trains head east, several with the destination of Harrow-on-the-Hill, another rarity. We saw a few mainline trains on the tracks parallel to the station. That was all we saw. Everything was slowly winding down for the night. When I lived in Chesham, I used to regularly use this stretch of line late at night, on the way home from bellringing practices in the city centre. It all felt very different stone cold sober.

After 18 minutes a westbound train stopped in the station. Better still, it was going to Watford. We trundled through 5 stations to the end of the branch, then waited for the same train out several minutes later. It seemed to last forever.

Back at Moor Park we were subject to another rare thing – using the fast-service platforms outside of peak hours. Presumably part of a strategy to get the Met line moving again. We only had a 5-minute wait for a train (yes, that’s normally an age, but in the top-left hand corner of the map at this time of night that’s a good connection), and the train was for Chesham. So we finally knew that we would be finishing at the other extreme station of the Met line – Amersham.

I hadn’t been to Chesham since the day I moved out of the place over 6 years ago. Naturally I wanted to stand on the platform again. It didn’t even feel weird. It was unfamiliar. In the dark, I could make out very little of the town through the trees around the station. I wouldn’t be passing through the barriers here tonight and my bed for the night was about 20 miles away in a straight line. It felt more line the edge of the universe.

We had been at the front of the train, but the final change of the day at Chalfont & Latimer required us to be somewhere near the middle. Not that a swift change was even remotely likely, but we didn’t want to get caught out. And as we walked down the train, we noticed a strange chemical smell in the air. We sat down and saw painted graffiti on the outside of the train on the side away from the platform. Someone must have been waiting in the dark and left their mark on the train whilst it was in the station. As we got off at Chalfont & Latimer we tried to make out what it said but failed.

We passed the inevitable 15-minute wait at Chalfont & Latimer by trying to decide which waiting room was less cold. I decided that there was little different.

As we took the 3-minute journey up to Amersham we reflected on the day, recording for the camera all the misfortunes we encountered. There had been a fair few. But during our preparations on the previous night we had joked that whenever we go on adventures together, we often get plagued by misfortune yet we still pull through and have a good time. If anything, I myself wouldn’t have wanted everything to go as planned. It would have been boring and neither of us would be as keen to do it again. I feel that Casey feels the same way.

The train began to slow down, and we dug Casey’s phone out of the bottom of my bag. It was still counting the seconds. We stood by the carriage doors as the train came to a halt, waited a short moment for the doors to open and stepped onto Amersham platform, stopping the clock as we did so.

We smiled. We said well done to each other. We hugged. We had done it.

2 years of planning and dreaming had all come to a conclusion at about half past 11 on a cold Thursday evening on a railway platform, surrounded by solitary locals returning home for the night. It was not a big finish, or anything near. For the past few hours I had just wanted to get it all over with.

But we had done it, in a time of 18 hours, 22 minutes, 43 seconds. We had travelled on 54 different Underground services, plus 4 buses, a mainline train and a tram. We had made 311 station visited, plus another 4 from the mainline and the tram, and I have no idea how many bus stops we passed. We had run about 6km in-between stations and quite a bit within stations as well. The total distance travelled was probably several hundred miles.

The initial plan for getting home was to take the Met line – what else? – to Harrow-on-the-Hill the catch 2 buses back to East Bedfont. But we decided to get a taxi from Harrow instead. It was expensive but we both wanted to get home and had had enough of public transport for one day. We finally made it home at 1am, having been up for 21 hours. Tomorrow we would have a lie-in.
Full Network (270 stations) - 18:22:43
Parks - 7:57:23
Alphabet - 5:30:40
Roads, Streets and Lanes - 3:51:51
Zone 1 - 3:03:50 (Former record)
Bottle - 1:57:43
1 pint in 18 seconds
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EastActionWoman
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Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by EastActionWoman »

What a great write up! Impressed that you started with the FNC and hope you join us for a Random 15 or one of the other alternative challenges in the future.
Not a plus one :wink:
Roads, Streets and Lanes (2020-08-28) 3:46:16
Prague metro (2020-02-18) 2:27:56
All the Actons (2021-11-20) 0:42:34
Nigel
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Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by Nigel »

Congratulations on your completion - there are not very many of them these days. If you would like me to add you and Casey to the list of completions in the top times section of the forum, could you please DM me your names?
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Iain
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Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by Iain »

Congratulations, and thank you for a fantastic account! Morden is notorious for inaccurate next trains, as is Elephant.

Any plans for trying to beat that time?
Full Network: Three completions, Best time: 17:18:18 - thanks Glen, Andrew and Rhys!
Former DLR 45 station record holder (with Glen, Andi and Stevo) - 2h:08m:57s
All lines: 46:11 (6th equal)
Zone One 2:52:51 (thanks Glen)
andytube
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Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by andytube »

Well done both of you. Always nice to read someone's account of their attempt. Has been a long time since the last one.
Current best: 19:51:10 (2014). Hopefully that will be broken in 2018 :-)
TeamHelsinki
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Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by TeamHelsinki »

Lunaticonthegrass wrote: 23 Nov 2019, 15:36 My girlfriend and I did our first attempt at FNC a few months ago. (etc.)
Congratulations on your FNC completion! I am also a newbie here, my team only having done one FNC (in April 2018) and no other challenges. Thank you for not knocking us off our spot at the bottom of the league table, with a time past 30 hours! We missed out on Heathrow Terminal 4 in the evening and had to pick it up the following morning. :(

Your write-up is detailed and well written, but you are tantalisingly vague about your connections in Zone 1. I believe it is possible to reconstruct them with the information you have given, though...

-JMan
Helsinki Metro all stations 00:59:58
FNC 269/270 in 19:16:41
FNC completion Uxbridge to LHR4 in 30:32:57
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Lunaticonthegrass
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Location: North of Watford

Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by Lunaticonthegrass »

Iain wrote: 28 Nov 2019, 20:19 Congratulations, and thank you for a fantastic account! Morden is notorious for inaccurate next trains, as is Elephant.

Any plans for trying to beat that time?
Yes, I plan to do it again with Casey as support only. (Meaning that running connections will be faster, and there might be someone to tell me which platform to use.) Also hoping for a day when not quite as many things go wrong, although I'm not going to hope too much!
Full Network (270 stations) - 18:22:43
Parks - 7:57:23
Alphabet - 5:30:40
Roads, Streets and Lanes - 3:51:51
Zone 1 - 3:03:50 (Former record)
Bottle - 1:57:43
1 pint in 18 seconds
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Lunaticonthegrass
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Re: Attempt No.1 - 05/09/19

Post by Lunaticonthegrass »

TeamHelsinki wrote: 28 Nov 2019, 22:30
Lunaticonthegrass wrote: 23 Nov 2019, 15:36 My girlfriend and I did our first attempt at FNC a few months ago. (etc.)
Congratulations on your FNC completion! I am also a newbie here, my team only having done one FNC (in April 2018) and no other challenges. Thank you for not knocking us off our spot at the bottom of the league table, with a time past 30 hours! We missed out on Heathrow Terminal 4 in the evening and had to pick it up the following morning. :(

Your write-up is detailed and well written, but you are tantalisingly vague about your connections in Zone 1. I believe it is possible to reconstruct them with the information you have given, though...

-JMan
Yes, I didn't want to give away too much information about my route...

Although I doubt it could be used to break any records. Even if everything had worked as planned, we would still have come in an hour behind the record.
Full Network (270 stations) - 18:22:43
Parks - 7:57:23
Alphabet - 5:30:40
Roads, Streets and Lanes - 3:51:51
Zone 1 - 3:03:50 (Former record)
Bottle - 1:57:43
1 pint in 18 seconds
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