CiN 2011

[Nigel]

I am not laughing at this ... i am not laughing this ... i am not ... etc! But seriously, how? The whole point of starting at High Barnet was to have a perfect Mill Hill East! How did it go wrong?

Not sure what exactly happened with them, but I'm not surprised, as on my last two full networks the MHE train has left a couple of minutes early.

[Sam]

Ah yeah it's only 2 minutes on timetable so it's feasible the Barnet train was a little bit late or MHE went early!!

[moley]

Ah yeah it's only 2 minutes on timetable so it's feasible the Barnet train was a little bit late or MHE went early!!

The MHE trains KEEPS leaving 2 minutes early.

Each of the individuals on that train should put a TfL claim in for a 15 minute delay to their journey. Then TfL might do something about it!

[Sam]

Is there a public facing timetable showing the scheduled departure times though?

[Nigel]

Is there a public facing timetable showing the scheduled departure times though?

Yes - on the platform at Finchley Central! (And therefore presumably somewhere on the TfL website.)

[moley]

Is there a public facing timetable showing the scheduled departure times though?

Yes - on the platform at Finchley Central! (And therefore presumably somewhere on the TfL website.)

Yup. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/ ... rthern.pdf shows the timetable of the first few MHE shuttles. No excuses on TfL's part.

[moley]

Ah yeah it's only 2 minutes on timetable so it's feasible the Barnet train was a little bit late or MHE went early!!

The MHE shuttle always leaves a little early. Any experienced tube challenger *cough* should know that and have timetabled it in. You need to be on a train that arrives 4-6 minutes before it's scheduled departure time, not the one 2 minutes before, or you won't make it.

The interactive journey planner http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/im/SI-N.html lets you choose train times for Mill Hill East, departing south - but annoyingly click on Finchley Central and it only gives you High Barnet and Morden as timetable options which is annoying. For a limited service like MHE, it should definetely list those (and then adhere to them).

Would be quite interesting to take a photo of the published times on the platform at FC, then sit and watch MHE trains for an hour and make an exact note of the minute:second that they do depart, and then send it into TfL asking why.

I've asked this of a driver. They said that they are trained to go when the light goes Green. It is the Signallers responsibility to make sure that the light goes green at the correct time.

[moley]

The interactive journey planner http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/im/SI-N.html lets you choose train times for Mill Hill East, departing south - but annoyingly click on Finchley Central and it only gives you High Barnet and Morden as timetable options which is annoying. For a limited service like MHE, it should definetely list those (and then adhere to them).

If you open the High Barnet file it shows MHE as a branch. Now, consider the times and cross reference them to the first and last time table. It shows the first three trains as:
0534
0543
0552

what it fails to state is their actual destination:
0534 MHE
0543 High Barnet
0552 MHE

A thoroughly useless timetable. It does also explain why their a trains at 0631 and 0632 northbound. One goes to MHE, the other to High Barnet.

[hopeful traveller]

I wanted to come out to meet you all but I was disorganised and no one was near Harrow at 4:15

[MylesHSG]

Hello Guys and Girls,

You may be wondering why i've just got home 30 minutes ago. Well to put it simply it was an injury sustained during a Hammersmith to Olimpia run to my left hip. It was agony to walk on and after trying to battle through it I decided at North Harrow that I could not walk to West Harrow as it was too painful.

The start was a shambles. Both teams got the 5:40 from High Barnet, however this train left 2 minutes late! The MHE train was still on the platform when we got there, but the driver closed the doors just as Andi was about to step onto the platform, closely followed by the rest of us. My team (Andi, Ian, Tangy and myself) decided to walk to MHE to wake us up. Unfortunatly we went down the wrong road and thanks to my A to Z we got going the right way, however we were now concerned that we would now miss the next MHE train! Thank goodness a bus came along and us and several other passengers were thankful to Andi and Tangy for holding the doors! Wow that was close! Becuase of the setback we decided to take out Mornington Cresent and change onto the Victoria from Euston instead of KX. We got a Victoria up to Walthmanstow and used the Gospal Oak to Barking sevice to get to Leytonstone. We then went up to Epping, came back and did the loop with Nigel. We carried on down the Central towards our destination Shepards Bush, where we had 10 minutes to get to Olimpia. We agreed that it was a tad tight and instead went all the way up to West Ruislip. We made a 9 minute connection to Ickenham and onto Uxbridge. We had a few minutes wait for a train and idealily would have prefered a Met so we could do a quick West Harrow double back saving doing a run later on. However one train was sent to the sidings so we settled for a picadilly. We then ran North Ealing to West Acton and made a good change to Ealing Broadway were we got a district to Hammersmith and then ran/got a bus 1 stop to Olimpia. I was in the carrage for 30 seconds when the doors closed....phew. We then went up to Edgware Road and walked to Marylbone and caught (just) and Chiltern up to Amersham (ordering pizzas on the way). Well out of Amersham Andi went in serch of the Dominos, only to find it the other end of the high street. Luckly the bus was 5 minutes late and on our way to Chesham we went (on a very nice bus according to Tangy) and had a 3 minute wait. We changed at Moor Park and went up to Watford. Came back down, this is where I decided I couldn't carry on anymore. Andi, Ian and Tangy were about to start a run to West Harrow and then do a Preston Road-Northwick Park double back taking out the north section on the Bakerloo on the way down to the Hammersmith and City elevated section and then take out the SW corner.

[MylesHSG]

Judt had a text from Ian and they are currently doing Heathrow!

[hopeful traveller]

Any twitters that I don't have? Seem a bit in the dark here. Still fuming after I forgot to organise myself meeting up with you!

Sidenote: As CIN is on now, should someone call in and comment on this?

Gutted I couldn't come - School wouldn't let me

[MylesHSG]

@hopeful traveller. I was tweeting semi regularly up untill about 14:00. The Raven (Glen) swapped teams and was therefore on a faster route with more running/tighter connections and probably had less time to tweet.

I would also like to say bad luck to the other team (Glen, Kev and Nozza) 268/270! So close. What stations did you miss out by the way?

[The Raven]

@hopeful traveller. I was tweeting semi regularly up untill about 14:00. The Raven (Glen) swapped teams and was therefore on a faster route with more running/tighter connections and probably had less time to tweet.

I would also like to say bad luck to the other team (Glen, Kev and Nozza) 268/270! So close. What stations did you miss out by the way?

The two stations missed was Westminster and St James's Park. So that's 268 stations in 19h:11min:04 sec. We where planning to double back these two right at the end of the day but would of missed the last bus back to High Barnet and a lift from Going Underground back to the Travelodge I'm staying in. I'll write a full report later today.

[tangy]

My team did complete all 270- but was a close run thing as to whether we would! Finishing at Cockfosters at 0107 (i.e one of the very last trains of the day). The completion time was 19:24: 15.

Although our route plan was totally out of the window for most of thday, we figured that if we fell 40 minutes behind we would not be on the last Piccadilly line train to Cockfosters. The later part of the evening we managed to gain some time back (as one point we were almost 40 minutes off schedule) helped by a very good West Ham c2c connection amongst others.

Our major time waster was the Piccadilly line down to Heathrow. Can the Piccadilly line controllers please ensure that the next screen trains actaully show the CORRECT destination, a train going to Rayners Lane (as per the blind, was showing Heathrow on the next train screen) so a bit of confusion amongst all passengers!

Same thing again at Acton Town where the next train screen was showing it as a Heathrow train, even though it did change to the correct destination about 20 seconds before departure! When a Heathrow train did finally pull in it was shown as a Uxbridge train...however it was the wrong Heathrow train for us as it was a T5 terminator. So we did T5 first and to do T4 as a branch from Hatton X before getting bus to Feltham from T4 instead. This Hatton X transfer didn't work smoothly either as a T4 train was shown in the opposite platform, as per the blinds but we swear the on board tannoy said it was a T5 so we didn't board it (the next train screen was no help either as it was just showing "Piccadilly Line"). What a mess!

Upon exiting at T4, we sought the first bus over to Hatton X, which turned out to be Abellio Surrey route 557. Then at Hatton X waiting for the correct buses we waited ages only for the typical adage of... all three bus routes turning up almost at once (a 490 followed by a 90 then a 285). Helpfully the optimum semi fast RDG- WAT train from Feltham was running a bit late albeit a bit overcrowded!

On a lighter note, at Baker Street where we were doing a cross platform transfer at Baker Street, we were slightly in the wrong door position (not helped by me mis-reading my own door positions guide and quoting the s/bound door position rather than n/bound). Andi did manage to get halfway onto the Jubilee train when a police officer on the platform intervened and said "don't hold the doors" so 3 minute wait there for the next!