sven945 wrote:Congratulations to you lot! You had a few problems, but it seems like you had many fewer than the CiN day!
Next midweek attempt make it a Monday or a Wednesday and I'll definitely be joining you for much of the day.
We will hold you to that Jack as we are running out of stopwatch starters and stoppers
Twice former full network GWR holder and former Zone 1 Olympic and World Record holder with The Raven and Soupie Tube personality of the year 2009 Twice Winter Olympic Biathlon Gold Medalist with The Beer Baron 2008 All Lines Olympic Gold
ping pon wrote:I think the worst day to do an attempt on is on a friday as after about 7pm the sytem goes into meltdown
My attempt was actually on Friday and the system held up remarkably well in the evening with some very smooth changes, but that was over 3 years ago...
Many congratulations guys, sounds like a great day, and that is a very competitive time to aim for. That extra hour you must get in bed now might even tempt me out of retirement!
Well done, the early bird sometimes does catch the worm!
scrxisi wrote:I'd always be willing to do some support work on an attempt for anyone, with reasonable warning (about a month would be neccessary for work) and possibly a bit of help in getting up to/back from the middle-of-nowhere, if work would allow.
I've made a New Year's resolutio to break a World Record in 2008 - or at least have a damn good go. Guess which one I'm favouring
Most Jelly eaten with chopsticks in 1 minute?
Most Needles in the head?
Largest Scorpian held in the mouth?
Most Snails on the face?
I give up... which one are you having a go at? There are so many to choose.
p.s. without cheating, anyone care to guess what the records are in these categories?
Soup Dragon wrote:The driver then announced that due to a one-under on the Edgware branch his train was being diverted to terminate at Archway. This saved us a lot of messing around at Camden Town and probably saved us a couple of minutes
Hmph, that's the last time I volunteer to be on the support team for one of your attempts...
"This train is for King George the Fifth. So you can't go on it."
The earliest that you can get to Amersham from Baker Street is 0620 (setting off at 0520), according to TFL. I suppose it could be theoretically possible, but if I was doing it then I'd probably prefer starting on the first train in case things went wrong during the day, allowing you even more scope to definitely finish.
Last edited by sven945 on 02 Jan 2008, 23:40, edited 1 time in total.
With the Amersham start unfortunately the first train appears to be best, this is because later services to Chesham operate as a shuttle service and you end up wasting time changing twice at Chalfont & Latimer.
What's to say Amersham is the best starting point though?
Soup Dragon wrote:What's to say Amersham is the best starting point though?
Well, both computer software and human experience have shown that Amersham should be start or finish - probably simply because it's too expensive to go out there and back (even though Keith Lowe argues differently in "Tunnel Vision").
However, an Amersham finish is quite concievable, provided you have a set goal for your time and not trying to minimise it. One of Geoff's TV appearences illustrates this brutally - it's half an hour between the finishing opprtunities. But if you select your start with this in mind - I don't see any good reason why it wouldn't work with an Amersham finish. I looked into doing our record route backwards, but couldn't fit Shoreditch in properly... It's so much easier now!
Three times Zone 1 Challenge winner Official record holder in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records, pg 199
Agreed. Of course, "provided you have a set goal for your time and not trying to minimise it" is a major limitation. It seems obvious that it will be best to start with one of the lowest frequency services, if possible, with a zero wait. After 18 hours or so, the wait for the last train might be a random variable with a mean that's about half the service interval (under various assumptions, including that the preceding train is much higher frequency).
I had a 25 minute wait for the penultimate connection on my London Boroughs Challenge (missing one by a few seconds).
Having a bit of a Lockdown clearout and I've come across our full Journey Log for this attempt on 29/12/2007.
We started at Amersham at 05:28:12 and finished at Heathrow T123 at 22:59:03, giving us a time of 17h30m51s.
It still annoys me a great deal that GWR refused to confirm this as the world record. The reasons they gave were as follows....
1) That not all stations are open on the weekend.... WRONG, all stations were open, so it was a valid attempt.
2) An attempt on a Saturday is not valid..... WRONG, they had already given us authority to attempt if all stations were open.
3) It would be unfair to the current holders if they allowed us the record.... WRONG, we were the current holders.
Had the attempt been validated it would have resulted in three consecutive record attempts.
Three times Zone 1 Challenge winner 