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According to the Journey Planner the Mill Hill East service is becoming a shuttle off-peak from Monday 16th October.

In the morning peak the first through train is the 0601 from MHE, and the last is the 0956 from Finchley Central (0939 from Camden Town).

In the evening peak the first through train is the 1605 from MHE, and the last is the 1956 from Finchley Central (1940 from Camden Town)

From a tube challenging POV, the change will not make much difference. It may well work slightly quicker with the shuttle because of the increased reliability and a shorter turnaround time at Mill Hill East.

Guess this means I will have to put in a new FoI reqeuest for a northern line timetable and a Central Line as well.

Does this mean there is are extra High Barnet trains, if so then it could make that part of the challenge easier.

Will try and test out the shuttle during my next holiday.

After a quick glance, there seems to be more High Barnet trains which would indeed be the real benefit!

Incidentally, we waited for 9 minutes for a High Barnet train during our attempt the other week! This must be one of the rare occasions Tube Challengers don't want to see "Mill Hill East" first on the DMI...

I'd assume/hope that that the MHE shuttle would typically wait for a High Barnet (destination) train to arrive before it departs, thus minimizing the expected wait time...

So there goes any sneaky plan involving catching Mill Hill East trains in town, all you can do is head up to Finchley Central then hit and hope.

Of course, no problem if the Mill Hill East shuttles run to a timetable. But I find the idea of MHE trains running to time hard to believe...

There is no reason that the MHE shuttle should not run to time - however I do understand that if there is a staff shortage, it is the MHE shuttle that gets the chop and will be replaced by a BUS shuttle.

There are indeed extra trains now going to HB. Before this latest change, 4 out of 16 trains per hour via CX did run to/from Morden. Now all trains running via CX off peak will turn at Kennington.

This plan actually uses one unit extra than the previous scheduling. I understand from my sources that the plan in the long run is to source two short trains purely for the shuttles - possibly old stock from other lines.

Two? Isn't it single track?

maybe one is a spare.

will these trains be double ended?

Yes - they would need to be double ended.

One would be spare. I have checked with my source and he does not have any further information at the moment.

Myself and Dr Who ventured to Mill Hill East on Saturday as part of our research for Children in Need. What a pointless station it appears to be, I think three passengers got on our train, and the turnaround seemed to take at least 10 minutes, although I did not bother to time this. Hopefully LU close the station permanently before 17th November

I have known the turnaround to be as little as the time it takes the driver to change ends - about 3 minutes!

Soup Dragon wrote:Hopefully LU close the station permanently before 17th November

And will the replacement bus service you will be forced to use be quicker then???

editorsfoot wrote:

Soup Dragon wrote:Hopefully LU close the station permanently before 17th November

And will the replacement bus service you will be forced to use be quicker then???

Yes the way it's going it will soon be "The Bus Challenge"

editorsfoot wrote:

Soup Dragon wrote:Hopefully LU close the station permanently before 17th November

And will the replacement bus service you will be forced to use be quicker then???

Well I heard a rumour that they will close Mill Hill East and replace it with a new station, Hendon Cemetery Central due to open in 2015, and in the meantime Guiness will say we have to use the bus