First FNC attempt, 30/05/25

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TheEdgington
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Joined: 06 Oct 2025, 12:13

First FNC attempt, 30/05/25

Post by TheEdgington »

Hi all,
It's my first time posting here, so I thought it best to introduce myself. My name is David Edgington, I am a student living in Cambridge.

I have attempted the full 272 twice now (write up for the second to follow), but to stick to strict chronological order, this was the first, for which I was joined by two friends on 30th May this year (a Friday).

Chesham start at 05:16
Heathrow Terminal 5 finish at 23:46
Time of 18 hours, 30 minutes and 7 seconds
58 trains
5 buses
Runs between 7 pars of stations
271 stations by Guinness' rules (Kensington Olympia done by Mildmay line)

Important moments (in no particular order) include making a supposedly impossible connection at Woodford to a shuttle, missing a train at Edgware by getting separated (I went to the wrong platform), severe delays on the eastern Jubilee, missing an eastbound c2c train at West Ham due to not realising it had stopped further down the platform and then, having watched it leave, also missing the District line west from the same station.

We were too late for the last train of the day to Kensington Olympia, and waited around half an hour at West Brompton while seeing an Overground train go past without stopping, and several appear and be cancelled, before eventually getting to Kensington Olympia at 21:30 on the Mildmay line.

A district line train to Ealing Broadway was cancelled early on, and we made the (possibly unwise) decision to take the bus from Ealing Common, which spiralled to about half an hour delay. The Northern line went down just when we needed it, but we were able to rearrange the northern sections of the Northern, Jubilee and Picadilly lines to avoid any time waiting at a station, although I think this still lost us some time.

Generally connections were about what we expected, we didn't end up needing to hold any trains, and the only waits longer than 5 minutes were at Hainault (7 mins going back towards London, which was unexpected, and during which we were sadly unable to fill water bottles, or locate the toilet shown on TFL's own toilets map), West Brompton (as described above), and 11 mins at Amersham which was expected. We would have had a longer wait at Finchley Central, but ended up getting a bus to Mill Hill East, which enabled us to replenish supplies at the Co-op outside.

We managed to visit every station, although Kensington Olympia was not done by the book, hence 271 total. Apologies for the delay (May is some time ago now), I may have had some difficulty in creating an account (no hard feelings at all, I understand the necessity of reducing all robotic activity on the forum).

I'll be writing up our second attempt, which occurred on 25th July this year, shortly.
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tubeguru
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Re: First FNC attempt, 30/05/25

Post by tubeguru »

TheEdgington wrote: 06 Oct 2025, 17:14 Apologies for the delay (May is some time ago now), I may have had some difficulty in creating an account (no hard feelings at all, I understand the necessity of reducing all robotic activity on the forum).
To be fair, that was also down to me not being proactive enough in dealing with registration requests :lol:
One thing only do I know, and that is that I know nothing - Socrates.

Champion of bugger all, 2004 to 2025
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