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My first all-lines attempt was scuppered in a confusing fashion.

I was 8 lines in - on track for around 45 mins - when I got on a train at Liverpool Street. It was to "Hammersmith via Paddington" but the departure board didn't say which line. The digital displays both on the outside of the carriages and inside were not working. There were no announcements while I was on the train and nobody around me had been on long enough to know where it had started. There were yellow handrails but I know that's not a reliable way of identifying the line any more.

Any suggestions for how to avoid this problem in the future? Are the working timetables close enough to reality to try to match up the times?

The most reliable way of avoiding the problem in future is to catch the subsurface trains in an eastbound direction, so that they all have different destinations....

It might be possible to differentiate between them by the route/line maps inside (although I'm not sure whether the Circle and H&C have the same route maps, covering both lines). It's also possible that trains fitted out for one line may have been transferred to another one for some reason (e.g. H&C have some units out of service, but if the Circle has a spare, it could be "loaned" to H&C).

After the event, if you really want to know which line you were on, you might be able to find this out via a Freedom of Information request ("I caught a westbound train at Liverpool Street bound for Hammersmith at 1557 on 4/2/2023, where did it originate from?").

I'd have thought comparing the train running number to the working timetable the least painful way. I'm sure the stock is shared.

Yes, the stock is shared (friend I stay with when I'm in London is a driver on Circle/H&C), so WTT is your best bet, unless there were delays on either line.

Ally wrote: ↑04 Feb 2023, 12:43 nobody around me had been on long enough to know where it had started.

Surely someone knew if the previous stop was Aldgate or Aldgate East?