18h25m03s - preliminary write-up

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hwolge
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18h25m03s - preliminary write-up

Post by hwolge »

Guinness World Record Attempt 26-Sep-2006

On Tuesday we (I, Håkan Wolgé and Lars Andersson) set a new record breaking time of 18h25m03s for "Travelling the London Underground in the shortest time". Clearly this is still subject to confirmation by GWR.

It all started some 20 months ago when I first read Keith Lowe's "Tunnel Vision". This revived my childhood love for the London Underground. I started browsing the net for information on any records. I immediately found Geoff Marshall's site, then record holder. I read his story on the 2004 Zone 1 Challenge and realized that the Zone 1 would be doable in a single day from Sweden. What I also realized was that it would be possible to get enough information on the internet to make it worthwhile to try to find an optimum route with a computer. On 16-Feb-2005 I had a crude Zone 1 route, 3 willing colleagues and Ryan Air return tickets to London. We did the Zone1 in a 2h58m37s. I returned back with Patrick Sillén for the 2005 Zone 1 Challenge (May 20th) and we won - thanks to an improved computer generated route. Knowing we had only done light jogging rather than running I understood the power of a good route. From that day, I guess, I wanted the Guinness World Record…

Even though I consider myself a qualified computer programmer, I couldn't really see how a 275 route could be found by a computer - it simply seemed a bit too complex. But over time ideas started to mature into algorithms and I started to realise it might after all be possible. In the autumn 2005 I started ripping all the Journey Planner's time tables and started writing my route finding program. I used a mid-March-06 date as the tentative target date. In the early months of 2006 things started to come together properly. Suddenly I had my first computer generated routes available. They were a bit crude compared to the latest one, but looked quite promising at the time (and Shoreditch was still open). First I intended only to try things out in March, but as the day drew closer and Lars was confirmed to come along we decided to have a proper go at it. Tubeguru himself volunteered to handle the stop watch and ended up doing around 200 stations with us. Looking back at it I can see that we learned a lot from both Neil and the experience itself. We almost broke the record already then - but failed a couple of hours before the finish when Earl's Court closed, prohibiting us from making Kensington (Olympia). We immediately decided to have another go after T4 reopened.

I went back to my computer to improve further, and after a while I came up with the route we were to use. I felt confident that it was record breaking stuff, provided we didn't encounter any serious disruptions. Minor delays are to be expected and are catered for. From our previous attempt we knew the model was robust enough and not too far from reality.

So finally this Monday (Sep 25th) I and Lars traveled again to London or rather Amersham where we had booked rooms at the Cherry Trees B&B. The hosts, especially the man in the house, had shown interest in our quest the last time, and indeed, when we arrived he offered us a drink in return for all our plans! We happily obliged.

At 5 o'clock we walked down to the station where our official time keeper Nadeem was waiting. A few pictures were taken and the stop watch started as we rolled away at 5:28:08… Our plan said we would end a Heathrow T123 at 23:38, i.e. in 18h10m…

Everything went glitch free for the first few hours and we were significantly ahead of plan, but when we hit the central area, we started loosing time on bad connections and suddenly we were slightly behind plan. At this point Steven Karahan joined us. He provided some insights and, not the least, some much needed lunch. He gave me some useful information for later on, some I probably would have guessed anyway, but got confirmed. He left us after about 4 hours and we continued on. At this stage we were around 5 minutes ahead of plan. In the evening tubeguru came out to check on us first hand and took a few photos. He stayed with us for about an hour. At this point we were starting the home stretch and suffered a few medium delays - mostly Pic line, due to earlier faults at Heathrow and partly due to Arsenal/FC Porto fans - setting us back around 15 minutes. Suddenly we were looking at a 23:53 finish, but that depended on making a 2 minute connection in the late stages… We made that connection and finally got on our final train to Heathrow (with one to spare 8 minutes later) and arrived at T123 at 23:53:11. However it turned out that the next train never arrived. We had actually caught the last T4 train of the day…

Some highlights:
* We had a nice stroll between the New Crosses in the beautiful sunshine - knowing trains were on time and we had a good 10 minutes to complete the connection.
* I had a close brush with doors closing around my knee, with Lars onboard after a communication glitch between us. After an eternity (probably at least 10 seconds) of me gesturing that I was stuck, the train driver finally conceded and reopened the doors. However she didn't start immediately but spent another 10 seconds to give me a verbal bashing over the speakers…
* At one station we ran out and caught a 10-minute interval bus just leaving. Even better was that the driver probably had a past as a car thief - at least it seemed like it when he drove. He even overtook one of his own numbers!
* Just after returning from Upminster we heard an announcement that all trains were suspended between West Ham and Barking due to debris on the track…

Some horror moments:
* Arriving at platform level going towards Upminster just seeing a train pull out. We had to wait another 8 minutes for the next one.
* During a double back / cross platform change we just saw the doors closing on the opposite side moments before our own doors opened.
* Just missing a train after a walk/run where we'd lost time due to erroneous notes on door positions - getting off at the wrong END of the train (the only such glitch though). Also felt I could have moved just a bit quicker between the stations…
* Loosing sight of Lars during a run. He was supposed to be ahead of me, but I couldn't see him anywhere after turning a corner. Moments later he came up from behind - he had missed the turn but had fortunately realised in time.
* When all the Arsenal/Porto fans invaded the train and we realised we would loose a few valuable minutes and subsequently would miss a crucial change - which we did (probably cost us the 23:38 finish)

That's about it. Now we're just awaiting confirmation from Guinness…
Last edited by hwolge on 01 Oct 2006, 16:05, edited 5 times in total.
:) Three times Zone 1 Challenge winner :)
:) Official record holder in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records, pg 199 :)
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Post by tubeguru »

Ah the joys of living in Holloway - I knew we'd be invaded by Arsenal supporters at Finsbury Park!

I got off at Caledonian Road, so I have no idea how much they held up proceedings from there.
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Post by Steeevooo »

Thanks for the prelimary insight into your Challenge Hakan, it certainly makes for a good read. You certainly had a good day in the main regarding line delays etc, and with the continuing delays on the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly line running into the night, there was always the possibility of some trains not making it down to H123, so I can imagine you were more relieved to have got the train that you did get in hindsight than you would have been at the time.
Congratulations again for beating our time, you really must have a fantastic computer programming knowledge - I wouldn't know where to begin to program basically, let alone something as large scale as this!
All the best,
Steve
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Post by tubeguru »

10 FOR X=1 TO 275
20 PRINT "Well done, you just passed station number " X
30 NEXT

That should do it ...
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Post by Steeevooo »

To show how little I know about computer programming, that means absolutely nothing to me :D
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Post by Going Underground »

Steeevooo wrote:To show how little I know about computer programming, that means absolutely nothing to me :D
Me and you both Steve :lol:
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Post by tubeguru »

The above is a very basic program written in er, BASIC.

The primary feature is a loop, as defined by the FOR ... NEXT structure.

The loop sets up a variable called X which starts with a value of 1. The loop then executes all instructions found between the FOR and the NEXT.

In this case, the program prints "Well done, you just passed station number " followed by the value of X.

The NEXT command instructs the program to return and process the next iteration of the loop. X is incremented by 1 and the whole process continues until X equals 275.

You could also say the following is true of tube challenges:

5 STATIONS = 275
10 REPEAT
20 IF STATIONS >0 THEN PRINT "STILL GOING!" ELSE END
30 STATIONS = STATIONS -1
40 UNTIL STATIONS = 0

Simple huh?
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Post by gasman »

I'd like to suggest a modification to the above program, so that it will model real-world scenarios more accurately.

15 IF X=136 THEN PAUSE 30000: REM Mill Hill East
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Post by tubeguru »

Ah yes, of course. Good thinking.

Actually, I suppose you could add all sorts of conditions in.

16 IF X=274 THEN STOP
17 REM EMERGENCY STOP BUTTON PUSHED AT UPMINSTER BRIDGE
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hwolge
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Post by hwolge »

I know I brought programming into this thread - but isn't it degenerating a bit?

Maybe a new Off Topic - topic: "TUBE BASIC 101"?
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:) Official record holder in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records, pg 199 :)
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Post by tpfkar »

I am starting a technology job near Milton Keynes at the end of October, and I had to give an 'interactive presentation' at interview. I spoke for 20 minutes about tube challenging and how you might come up with a decent route.

I concluded that it was far too complicated to consider as a network problem, and that trial and error was better than a really structured (algorithmic) approach at route planning.

So my message to Hakan is a simple 'Bah!' What I should have said was that only someone better than me at programming could look at it that way.

Would be very interested to hear about how you programmed it one day.

P.S. They enjoyed the presentation so much they asked if they could keep my ppt...and offered me the job!
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Post by hwolge »

I've formatted and tidied up my report a bit:

http://lund.dyndns.org/gwr/

feel free to link to it...
:) Three times Zone 1 Challenge winner :)
:) Official record holder in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records, pg 199 :)
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Post by Nutteronabus »

I haven't been on here in ages, so I've literally only just found out!

Congratumalationisms!
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