Random 15 Championship 2024/25: Round 6

[tangy]

If you are new to all of this:

Welcome to the Random 15 Championship. I am your host (commonly known to regulars as the BERC when I am hosting Random 15 challenges). The Random 15 challenge is just that, visit 15 randomly selected stations that feature on the Tube Map (usually within zones 1-2 and using the Underground network only). There will be certain rounds within the championship that are a variation of this such as adding an extra zone or network e.g. DLR onto the challenge. So are you ready to take on the Random 15 championship?

The rules and scoring are unchanged from previous seasons but if anyone is not familiar with them, or needs a refresh, you can view them here: http://www.explorerticket.co.uk/tubecha ... 5rules.htm

Round 6 is just under a week away and is your last chance to gain points for this season.

When: Saturday 31st May 2025 12:30 UK local time.
Variant: Normal round. LU only, zones 1 & 2.
Meet up: Stockwell- street side of the ticket barriers.
Post challenge pub: The Blue Posts, Newman Street W1T 3EU.
Time limit to complete: Normal round, so four hours allowed.

The post challenge meet up at the Blue Posts will also be the closing ceremony for this season, with prizes given to the podium positions.

Closures affecting this challenge:
Circle: No service on the whole line before 16:00 hours.
District: No service on the whole line before 11:00 hours.
Hammersmith & City: No service on the whole line before 11:00 hours then no service between Edgware Road and Moorgate until 16:00.
Jubilee: No service on the whole line until 11:00 hours then no service between Waterloo and Stanmore for the rest of the day.
Metropolitan: No service between Aldgate and Watford (Met) all stations service. Fast trains to Amersham / Chesham will run north of Harrow on the Hill. Chiltern trains via Amersham unaffected.
Waterloo & City: Usual planned weekend closure.

Therefore, if I have got this correct, the following stations are closed at the start of the challenge: Willesden Green, Kilburn, West Hampstead (LU), Finchley Road (LU), Swiss Cottage, St. John's Wood, Great Portland Street, Euston Square, Farringdon, Barbican and Aldgate. These have been excluded from the draw.

Other closures to be aware of:
DLR: No service between Prince Regent and Beckton.
Overground - Mildmay : No service between Camden Road and Stratford.
Overground - Windrush: No service between Surrey Quays and Clapham Junction.

South Eastern: No trains at London Victoria - diversions to Cannon Street / Charing Cross / Blackfriars.
Greater Anglia: No service Tottenham Hale - Stratford.

Who's coming?

[Going Underground]

yeah, was looking at closures last week - what a bleedin mess

[ANDY_JS]

Attending. Looks interesting with all those closures. (I thought I'd posted this comment yesterday but something must have gone wrong with my connection).

[penguin]

I think you posted it here:

viewtopic.php?p=114684#p114684

Happens to the best of us.

I'm attending both today and tomorrow.

[miklcct]

I am planning to come (although the closure of the Jubilee line may pose a problem)

[penguin]

This was not a very good round for me...

I almost accidentally began by going northbound from Stockwell (that would not have been good*) but I luckily missed a train, giving me time to notice that Clapham was on there, so I ended up on the same train(s) as everyone else at Clapham Common. Then I tried to head west via the Vic but was scared of the 10 minute service gap that may or may not have existed** so I hopped off and straight back on the same train at Stockwell. Again at Kennington I tried to head west via CX but there was a 5 minute wait so I just got back on the same train - I couldn't get rid of it!

I did the same turnaround at Bermondsey as lots of people, so two London Bridge changes there. Realistically might've been better to run to Monument than to wait for a train, as it was quite busy and it's a run I've done before with success. Anyway, then Bank/Monument to Cannon Street and back to Monument (again, should've run that......). I had initially planned on going west now and doing Old St later, but my route turned into a never-ending series of "just one more" and I ended up slicing London in half. Through Old Street for a KX change then Vic to Finsy and a double back at Manor House, then same again backwards to Euston for a Mornington Crescent train. I continued to Camden pining for a Bank train that I missed, and ended up coming back to Euston via MC again.

Then Victoria to Oxford Circus, Central to NHG, missed a 6tph WimbleWare so ran to HSK for the 3tph KenO shuttle, but missed that too and just went down through Earl's Court to West Brompton for a relaxed Mildmay train. Then over the road at Shepherd's Bush, then the classic White City-Wood Lane, where Andrew Chilcraft hurtled past in the opposite direction screaming. Through Royal Oak to Bishops Road then from Praed St to Kilburn Park where I saw Peter and Tangy finish! Very demoralising when you still have to get to BBB....

Out of KP the display said a train wasn't due for 15 minutes (although I'm told one appeared after six minutes...) so I left the station, hoping for a bus, any bus, that would be quicker. There are loads of routes that could've come but I guess it was a bad day for them because I ended up getting a train from Maida Vale, having run almost a mile down the road! Then from Praed Street I crossrailed to Liv St and central through Bethnal Green with a final change at ME for a BBB finish in 3hr 26min and something.

In the pub, we discussed how tube challenging is a combination of luck, skill, knowledge and athleticism - and I think it was quite a bad day for all of them for me. I repeatedly had to face the worst possible wait times, but then chose the worst possible options in response.

*Sasha, Michael and I discussed a hypothetical best-case route beginning with a northbound departure from Stockwell, a couple of turnarounds to tick of some number of Central London stations, then heading through Clapham to get the 13:29 from Balham, which takes you straight to Shepherd's Bush and/or West Brompton. Really, it was quite a satisfying station draw with a lot of nice options, and I somehow didn't take any of them....

**I'm also told that 10 minute gap didn't exist either.... Although, services were not to be trusted yesterday.

[tractakid]

A round where mostly everything went right.

Stockwell Clapham Common London Bridge West Ham Mile End Bank (run to) Cannon Street Monument (run to) Bank Kings Cross St. Pancras (Victoria) Finsbury Park Manor House Finsbury Park Euston Mornington Crescent Warren Street (run to) Regent's Park Kilburn Park Paddington (run to) Paddington Wood Lane (run to) White City Notting Hill Gate Earl's Court.

I was happy with my route, except being worried by the frequencies of the sub-surface in the West due to the closure of the Circle line. My longest wait of the day was 3 minutes for the final train to Earl's Court- the next train was 11-12 minutes behind that. So I got very lucky with that, especially as the wait at Paddington H&C was about 2 minutes.

The run from Warren Street was a very last minute realisation, but really worked well. I was previously thinking of changing to the Vic and changing again at Oxford Circus, but I'm certain that would have been slower. I dodged a couple of long waits elsewhere too- the train behind the one I caught at Regents Park was about 7 minutes behind, as I arrived at White City the boards claimed a 6 minute wait, but I made the train on the platform that was about to depart.

I need to get thinking about Round 1 next season...

[Capelblue]

It was another hot and humid day as we gathered at Stockwell for the start of the final round of the season. I started my watch, got through the barriers but before I could open the envelope I saw a crowd running to the southbound platforms so I followed, doubling back at Clapham Common with most of the crowd, although a few headed up and out of the station to our bemusement. Northern line back up to London Bridge, where 5 of us (Sasha, Andrew C, Tangy, Vincent and I) ran through the tunnels to the Jubilee line. I did a double back at Bermondsey along with at least Sasha and Vincent, and back to London Bridge, through the tunnels to Bank, and then a run to Cannon Street at which point I was on my own. I took the District line all the way to Earls Court where during a longish wait for an Edgware Road train I was joined by Andy JS who told me a tale of woe about bus delays in Clapham, so I calculated that I was probably 2 stations up on him at this point. We were together for a while now, through High Street Kensington up to Notting Hill Gate, onto the Central line, through Shepherd's Bush to White City for the run to Wood Lane, through Royal Oak to Paddington, and a rare R15 Paddington run to the Bakerloo line (despite wondering about doing an Edgware one or doubling back to Royal Oak and running to Warwick Avenue). Anyway it was a double back at Kilburn Park all the way to Oxford Circus (so many line closures in that area !). A quick hop on the Victoria line to Warren Street, and then onto the Northern line, it was a High Barnet train, so I decided to go for the overground route I had in mind, it took me through Mornington Crescent and up to Archway (Andy left me at Camden Town), for the run to Upper Holloway, a 6 minute wait for a Goblin to Harringay Green Lanes, and run down to Manor House. Now, the question was would the Great Northern line work to get from Finsbury Park to Old Street ? Alas, not, it would be a 10 minute wait, so I got onto the Victoria line, only to find signal problems and the train sitting in the platform, it took 12 minutes to get to Kings Cross rather than the usual 5. I changed to the Northern line (again !) to go to Old Street, a 5 minute change at Bank, through Bethnal Green, straight onto a District line train to finish at Bromley by Bow in a time of 3:19:07.

I think my route could definitely have been more efficient, I had some slowish changes, but no really good ones. The odd thing was that I felt much better running than during the Z1CC the day before, despite the weather being very similar.

Well done Tangy for organising, and congratulations to Andrew C for a dominant season.

[miklcct]

The starting station of Stockwell on an LU-only challenge means that it is generally safe to run into the station at the beginning, as the southbound services are a cul-de-sac (especially with the Windrush closure).

In the list, there was a station on the cul-de-sac: Clapham Common, so it was a no-brainer to go there. I then circled all stations on the map and decided to go clockwise (which ended up not a good idea, as it was worse than the winning route by about 15 minutes according to the schedule).

Now, Aubin has gone production and by tuning the preferences in the app, it can show me realistic timings and connections (as long as the stations are mapped in sufficient details in OpenStreetMap) in a time window, and it can be saved beforehand, so I can pick the fastest route at the exact minute (subject to available real-time information - it currently supports National Rail and select buses outside London only, so it is still schedule only on the tube - hopefully in the next season the app will support real-time tube timetable for journey planning).

After Clapham Common, I travelled to Earl's Court using Aubin's provided route of changing at Stockwell and Victoria, where it should be a 4-minute connection onto an Edgware Road train. However that train was late and I waited for 8 minutes. Then I passed through High Street Kensington to Notting Hill Gate for Shepherd's Bush. Usually the fastest way to Royal Oak was to turn back and run from Queensway however Aubin showed me that, on the exact same train I was on, I could continue to White City for a change at Wood Lane, and the connection was made exactly as scheduled.

I travelled via Royal Oak to Paddington for a run to the Bakerloo, and travelled to Kilburn Park. Aubin told me that the fastest route to Mornington Crescent at that exact moment would be to change at Oxford Circus and Warren Street, but unfortunately the train back to Oxford Circus encountered some delays in zone 1, and I fell behind the timetable.

After Mornington Crescent, I followed Aubin again to change at Euston and Finsbury Park to travel to Manor House, then Aubin suggested me to change direct at Finsbury Park from Piccadilly to Great Northern. Unfortunately the OpenStreetMap data at Finsbury Park is still something I am working on, and isn't complete yet, so it couldn't give me a realistic timing (i.e. showing 0 minutes for cross-platform connections, which has been done at places like Stockwell or Finchley Road) on the normal route with a Victoria line journey in between, and I waited for 6 minutes at Highbury & Islington for the Great Northern train to come, which I travelled to Old Street.

Unfortunately due to the lack of mobile signals, I couldn't plan my journey after Old Street beforehand in the time I travelled in the 5G-enabled section on the Northern line so I was blind which way to go, as the best way to get to Cannon Street is always by running to/from Bank, but I need a one-stop Cannon Street - Monument in either direction to tick it off (it is possible to plan the best route using the Aubin journey planner by putting Cannon Street as a "passthrough station", a new feature in OpenTripPlanner version 2.7, for an Old Street to Bermondsey journey - the definition of a "passthrough station" in OpenTripPlanner is a station which you must stop on a public transport journey, but you are not required to board / alight there - in this way it will suggest you a one-stop Cannon Street - Monument journey on the way from Old Street to Bermondsey, in whichever direction which makes the journey the best).

Corridor closure at Bank confused me while running to Monument and I missed a train, waited for 3 minutes afterwards for the next one to Cannon Street, and after running back to Bank, I waited for 4 minutes for another train to London Bridge.

After getting back signals on the Jubilee line, I started to plan my remaining journeys. I originally hoped for a Bromley-by-Bow finish but it was hard to travel from Bermondsey to Bethnal Green, and I decided to switch around after checking some journey times, so I ended up passing through Bermondsey to West Ham, then via Bromley-by-Bow to Mile End for a finish at Bethnal Green, a waste of time going out and back in.

My final result was 3:10:46. I later checked my timing against the scheduled timetable and I found out that, although the 8-minute wait at Earl's court caused a delay, it was completely recovered by means of the connection at White City / Wood Lane. The delay from the Bakerloo was also recovered by the Great Northern journey to Old Street, and I was left with a final delay of 5 minutes resulting from a missing train on the Northern line and the 4-minute wait at Bank to London Bridge, and the winning route (Earl's Court finish) was actually 15 minutes faster on schedule.

[tractakid]

I've just had a short play with that app. It seems good. But I do wonder if you limit yourself by exclusively using it to plan routes. Some of the best time saves in tube challenging I reckon are extremely unlikely to be shown on an app.

[tangy]

The results of round 6 of the 2024/25 Random 15 Championship held on Saturday 31st May 2025. This was the last round of the season.

This was a normal round with only 15 LU stations in zones 1 and 2 to be visited. These were:

--Stockwell (meet up / start)
--High Street Kensington
--Old Street
--Mornington Crescent
--Bermondsey
--Paddington (Bishop's Road)
--Bethnal Green (LU)
--Shepherd's Bush (LU)
--Manor House
--Cannon Street (LU)
--Bromley-by-Bow
--Royal Oak
--Clapham Common
--Earl's Court
--Kilburn Park

There were 13 challengers split into 10 teams:

10th: Kevin Brown & Andrew Baker - 03:50:15 at Bethnal Green.
9th: Andy JS - 03:42:31 at Bermondsey.
8th: Vincent Karthaus - 03:26:11 at Bromley-by-Bow.
7th: Tom Hardy, Edward Hill and Josh Valdez - 03:24:27 at Manor House.
6th: Ian McIntyre - 03:19:07 at Bromley-by-Bow.
5th: Sacha Hunter - 03:11:24 at Earl's Court.
4th: Michael Tsang - 03:10:46 at Bethnal Green.
=2nd: Peter Smyth - 02:42:40 at Kilburn Park.
=2nd: Tangy - 02:42:40 at Kilburn Park.
1st: Andrew Chilcraft - 02:40:55 at Earl's Court.

Therefore the final standings in the leaderboard look like this:

1st: Andrew Chilcraft (53 points) [6 rounds] (worst score of 3 deducted).
2nd: Peter Smyth (43) [6] (worst score of 3 deducted).
3rd: James Wright (33) [5].
4th: James Ramsbottom (27) [5].
5th: Vincent Karthaus (26) [5].
6th: Tangy (22) [6] (worst score of 1 deducted).
7th: Ian McIntyre (21) [6] (worst score of 1 deducted).
8th: Rhys Jackson (18) [3]
=8th: Milo Ogidel (18) [4]
10th: Edward Hill (17) [4]
=10th: Josh Valdez (17) [4]
12th: Glen Bryant (13) [2]
13th: Hugo Marrow (12) [1]
=13th: David Edwards (12) [1]
=13th: Richard Smith (12) [1]
16th: Tom Hardy (11) [3]
17th: Rob Lomas (10) [1]
18th: Maudh Zeroual (8) [2]
=18th: Ian Imrie (8) [2]
=18th: Pascal Liu (8) [2]
=18th: Michael Tsang (8) [3]
=18th: Kevin Brown (8) [5]
=18th: Andrew Baker (8) [6] (worse score was a 0)
24th: Sacha Hunter (6) [1]
25th: Daxon Phillips (5) [1]
=25th: Nick Badley (5) [1]
=25th: Natt Rea (5) [1]
28th: Stephen Moore (4) [1]
=28th: Rhys Benjamin (4) [2]
=28th: Richard Standing (4) [2]
31st: Andy JS (2) [6] (worst score was a 0)
32nd: David JS (0) [2]
=32nd: Myles Swaine-Gray (0) [2]
=32nd: Das Stevens (0) [2]
=32nd: Adam U (0) [1]
=32nd: Michael D (0) [1]
=32nd: Simon Hawthorne (0) [1]
=32nd: Emily Pettitt (0) [1]
=32nd: James Beck (0) [1]
=32nd: Sam Beck (0) [1]
=32nd: Emma Copeland (0) [1]
=32nd: Susie Carter (0) [1]
=32nd: Amanda Ng (0) [1]
=32nd: Andrew Ng (0) [1]

Therefore Andrew Chilcraft is declared the champion for the 2024/25 season. We await his Champion's Twist for round 1 of next season. We now enter our summer break, however we will start again for the new 2025/26 season in September 2025, please look out for announcements and/or a discussion about possible dates for each round.

Thank you for everyone who attended the Random 15 this season, for one round or all six. There is no challenge without any challengers!

Tangy.
The BERC (Bernie Ecclestone of Random 15 Championship).

[miklcct]

I've just had a short play with that app. It seems good. But I do wonder if you limit yourself by exclusively using it to plan routes. Some of the best time saves in tube challenging I reckon are extremely unlikely to be shown on an app.

If the best time save does not appear in the app when the appropriate preference is set, the data is not good and our data team needs to investigate on the issue.

[Rhys1995]

A massive thank you to Tangy for organising this season's Random 15 championship. I've really enjoyed this season, its been nice seeing more of you all as I believe this is the most I've been able to attend since 2013/14!

See you all after the summer break and very well done Mr Chilcraft on winning this year's Random 15 championship.