tubechallenge.com

According to the gr8 Geoff Marshall on June 13th 1959 R.J Lewis & D.R. Longley took part in the first ever tube challenge.I thought to commemorate the historic event 50 years on June 13th this year all tube challengers should partake in a mass event.

Well i presume that the original members who did this are not here anymore. it be nice way to respect the past.Maybe we can get Bob Robinson to start us off.

is it a saturday im not sure but it could still be done on the friday

It's always been a source of amazement to me how you lot keep coming up with the most ridiculous ideas of all time.

Once again, I haven't been disappointed.

Seriously though, we have no way of knowing if the 1959 attempt was the first ever tube challenge. Geoff got that information from the Guinness Book of Records, the first edition of which was published in 1955. Therefore it is entirely possible, and entirely plausible, that people would have been tube challenging well before 1959, or even 1955. So while the 1959 attempt is probably the first recorded effort, I doubt we'll ever know when the very first full network challenge (as it was back then) was attempted.

After all, in 1863 anyone who travelled from Praed Street to Farringdon Road in one journey would have completed a full network challenge, and would share the record with everyone else on the train that did it the fastest. And I'm fairly certain there would have been Victorians who visited every station on the network on one day in, say, 1895 as the extent of the lines would not have been great, and the novelty value of such adventures was high back then.

So surely what you're going to be celebrating is the 50th anniversary of the first full network challenge being recorded in the GWR?

Sorry to be pedantic and all that ... carry on.

Yes ur right neil in a way i suppose a lot of people travellled to every station on the network before then but didnt specifically decide to visit all stations in the fastest time.The 1st recorded time is theirs and for ever will be.

How do you know that someone didn't record a time in 1925 by writing into a newspaper of the day?

Guinness World Records didn't suddenly become the authority on tube challenging times when it started publishing them in 1959.

I borrowed Dr who,s tardis enough said.

tubeguru wrote:It's always been a source of amazement to me how you lot keep coming up with the most ridiculous ideas of all time.

Once again, I haven't been disappointed.

And likewise I'm not disappointed at the bog standard response from Mr Tubeguru!

We won't stop until there is at least one full network challenge every single day of the year, excluding Christmas Day of course.

Nice one Mr soup Dragon i think apart from myself totta kai should have more attempts pre annum.

I thought the issue in question was not how many challenges you can do in a year, but rather the inexplicable nonsense that the first ever tube challenge was held on a certain date with no evidence to the contrary.

questin neil how many challenges have u done and if u dont trust u winning record partners information then who can u trust.

palkanetoijala31 wrote:questin neil how many challenges have u done and if u dont trust u winning record partners information then who can u trust.

I've probably done about 10 to 15 challenges of various natures. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything though. Maybe because I haven't done 398457954 of them I'm not qualified to comment on this ...

And what does whether I "trust" Geoff's information have to do with it? You're implying that his word is truth and nothing else matters. I know Geoff got the information from the GWR because he told me that's where he got it all from at the time he was doing it! So therefore he has no way of knowing any more than anyone else when the first ever proper tube "challenge" took place. All he can go on is what the GWR published, as they were the only people who published the records.

Soup Dragon wrote: We won't stop until there is at least one full network challenge every single day of the year, excluding Christmas Day of course.

On Christmas Day you can do the visiting all stations by car challenge instead.

Now that's a much more sensible suggestion. Geoff and I always wondered how quickly you could "visit" all 275 (as it was at the time) by car but we never got round to it. I think you may find other threads about it on the forum if you do a search.

We decided that so long as you were close enough to have a picture of the roundel or the name on the outside the station it would count. Obviously for places like Heathrow you would have to park up and run inside for the picture as I don't believe T4 has an overground building. Does it?

I would quite like to to the Z1 bike challenge on Christmas Day.......

A lot of kids get a new bike for Xmas and what better way to break it in than to visit all the Z1 stations......

greatkingrat wrote:On Christmas Day you can do the visiting all stations by car challenge instead.

In all seriousness, Greatkingrat, that's a great idea. The roads will be clearest on that day, and presumably the congestion charge won't apply. The only trouble is appeasing the family while you go galavanting off around London. Oh, and the AA and the RAC and petrol station attendants taking a day off.