Glen & Iain's attempt - 18/5/12

[Iain]

Time for another attempt! Essentially the same route as last time, but with a few more back up plans in our back pocket, door positions in a neat and tidy small book rather than two large books of scribbled notes, not in alphabetical order. Plus once again we had support – this time world record holder Andi, who was a total star all day (as was Myles on previous attempts).

Bonus-we were using Audioboo – allowing us to do audio recordings and upload them, although due to not understanding it properly it wasn’t linked up with twitter right and some didn’t go to the right account. We’ll get it right next time. Oh – and our attempts at secrecy were scuppered by the fact it uploaded our location each time. Oops! Finally, it seemed to log itself out so a lot of my reports didn’t upload to the named account meaning they would have been missed. Glen’s putting together a video report anyway so I won’t put much effort into retrieving them.

Anyway – onto the challenge. We started at Chesham and did a fairly standard route down to north Harrow. Last time out an early departure from Moor Park caused a long delay, but no problem this time as the train we wanted to get onto was late – so late in fact that we were concerned our four minute change at Watford might be scuppered. In the end it worked okay, and we headed down to North Harrow. Out of the station and a rather nice H9 turned up – so early down to Rayner’s Lane, onto a train earlier than our schedule, and down to Ealing Broadway, where our gain was lost due to narrowly missing an outgoing district. A slight wait for our planned train, and then off to connect up to the Central at Holborn.

This was a big decision – the schedule allowed for a Russell Square double back, but it was always a bit tight, and our train being a minute late didn’t help. We hesitated for a few seconds before deciding to follow Andi off the train, and it was a good job we did as the incoming train was a minute early, and we’d certainly have missed it. Phew! Now a fairly relaxed trip around the loop until we had to switch on again at Woodford. All on time, but arrgghh! As we pulled into the platform we saw that the Epping train was already on the opposite platform and the doors shut before our train stopped moving. The train had left over a minute early. I did an Audioboo just after this and the app has a habit of suggesting what seems like random titles each time that you can change; this time it chose “bloody Central line”! My thoughts exactly.
The missed train was problematic, as if we’d caught it we had a nice change at Epping and a train back for a sixteen minute run to Wood Street from Snaresbrook. If we had another train up to Epping quickly we could make a quick change to Epping and still have the same time to run, but anything slower was a problem. As it turned out our train into Epping was held to allow the train we wanted out, and the next train wasn’t four eight whole long, frustrating minutes. This meant we had an eight minute run to make, so no way, and we still had to fit in a Russell Square double back we hadn’t done. So – we did about 14-15 minutes run to Wood Street and sat around a bit, and then had a decision to make.

We had the option to head up to Cockfosters as planned and across to High Barnet, do Russell Square before that, or go straight up the Northern to MHE. After checking the time for going straight up to Cockfosters it seemed tight so decided to do the double back first and drop two MHE train back. This was frustrating but probably the best option.

Part way up to Cockfosters we heard that the Central was playing silly buggers (again). So – a change of route to delay the Central line for a bit, and then a transfer over to High Barnet. Andi had shown me a new run but I still appreciated him running it with us, and we were waiting for a selection of buses. One came, and again a new one, and we sprinted into the station. Andi had gone ahead and to enable Andi to run faster I had taken the heavy bag with our drinks, but it did slow me down, so I was behind the guys and heard them yelling frantically as I entered, so I pelted down to the platform and onto a train down for MHE. This was good as while the following train was okay, it did have a one minute change at Finchley Central which seemed a bit risky with one of the big three. So – our change at the top of the northern had actually needed all the extra time allowed, but we had a slick second of the big two in our metaphorical collective pocket.

Back from Mill Hill East, and a train was pulling into the southbound platform – just the one we wanted via Moorgate so another mad sprint. We needn’t have worried as we got there before the train stopped. If only that had happened at Woodford earlier! Anyway, down via Moorgate to Baker Street, and up to Stanmore via Baker Street. At this point we had several options but since there was a train back out in one minute we doubled back to Canons Park and waited for a bus. And waited for a bus…the DMI said it was due but nobody had told the bus driver, so we lost several minutes. The bus moved well until it hit traffic near Edgware, so we ran the last bit. Another frantic dash for a train out that we made and we were on our way down to TCR to head out to West Ruislip.

The first train from TCR didn’t go all the way but as we headed westwards Andi had a stroke of genius. This really showed me how important it is to stay alert. I’d planned to do Ken O at the end of the day but just looking at the times there was a Ken O train available. Did we take it? Well, our train on the planned route worked nicely too but a) we were now off our plan and b) anything could have happened between now and the evening. I’ve said before I like to get the big three out of the way early on, so this seemed like a good opportunity, so we took it, dipping down from Notting Hill Gate. Ken O was ticked off slickly (so all big three done) and then up the H&C and back to NHG again to head out to West Ruislip. We’d really gone off the planned route by now but we seemed to be going well. At this point we had a six minute wait for the West Ruislip train but this was the only thing that hadn’t gone well since our problems at the east end of the Central.

Straight out of West Ruislip and almost as if we’d said “Acchia U1” Harry Potter style, a U1 bus appeared. We took it, but then had to decide if we took it down to near Ickenham or rode it all the way to Uxbridge. On the last two runs there hadn’t been a train out of Ickenham for a while so it worked, but it may have been different. We didn’t have time to check so gambled (bit of a lack of foresight on our part) and went all the way to Uxbridge. It moved quickly and we ran in straight onto a waiting train down the Met. We took out Preston Road, but our return train had problems with the CCTV cameras meaning we had to wait while they fixed them, costing several minutes. Anyway, we had four minutes to make a train at Kenton. This would have been fine but the barriers at Kenton were misbehaving meaning a backlog of people trying to get through one of them. Glen made it but it was tight for me and Glen held the doors for a few seconds meaning I got it. It took a few minutes to get in and out of H&W and we then took out all the Bakerloo in one fell swoop.

The next section went well, but now was one of my least favourite bits of the day, where we end up on several trains squashed into a packed carriage that’s too hot. We made a good connection onto the overground and West Ham and were soon on our way back via underground. This was a welcome chilled out patch, but then a run to Aldgate from Aldgate East. Fortunately no mistakes this time round but another tight connection with much yelling and we were travelling around the Circle line. This was quite fun as some people twigged what we were doing and we had an interesting chat about tube challenging. It’s amazing how many people think it’s not possible to do the whole network in a day.

Next – we had a problem. We’d avoided most of the difficulties all day but now we had limited options, and of course the Vic, Pic and District all had problems. So – no choice but to battle. We took out Brixton very slowly as there was a huge backlog of trains and we must have stopped for a couple of minutes in the tunnels half a dozen times. The Northern worked better but no obvious bus from Morden so onto a double back. Still no buses at South Wimbledon so we started running, and kept running all the way, where we still had a fair wait, presumably because of signal failure at Wimbledon Park. After that it all went pretty smoothly until we hit the Pic. We were fortunate enough to get a one minuter at Earl’s Court down to Richmond and a decent double back. The run from Gunnersbury to Chiswick Park went well and we even got a District in a couple of minutes, but at Acton Town there was a fair wait for a T4. We chose a T5 and calculated if this was quicker, but given the fact they were way off the timetable this was somewhat futile. We got off at Hatton Cross and finished via T4, but there were long waits at T4 and at T123 for a T5, taking us past the seventeen and a half hour mark – most annoyingly. Anyway – 17:37:09 –just outside the top twenty but we’re both pleased with it.

[The Raven]

Here's the video of are adventures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx60QaNsmmI

[Iain]

The route we did on Friday was nothing liked our planned route, although it's possible the Ken O bit might have worked anyway as it turns out.

In any case the route had a scheduled finish of 16:53 so not endangering the record, although we had hoped we might make inroads on that with some slick changes.

After that run I'm feeling like doing an all or nothing route with a different route (already planned).

[Iain]

Ok - just been fiddling about and I think I've a) sorted out the location posting b) got the audioboos to tweet to down_the_tubes and c) got it to link all the audioboos I did to the down_the_tubes account, so if anyone wants to hear them go to audioboo. It's only tweeted a trial one I just did though I think but should tweet anything I do (or Glen does) from now on for future runs

[nozzacook]

I don't think Kev will ever forgive that driver.

[Iain]

To be fair to our driver there was a red light all the time, can't say I blame Kev though!

[The Raven]

It could have been the same driver, you never know!

[palkanetoijala31]

It could have been the same driver, you never know!

I wonder if the surname is same as iain,s they might share the same bladder

[Going Underground]

Yes our light was green, and green for plenty long enough to get to T123 for the last connection we missed by around a minute......

Nozza is right I will be bitter & twisted about that forever

[Sam]

Yes our light was green, and green for plenty long enough to get to T123 for the last connection we missed by around a minute......

Nozza is right I will be bitter & twisted about that forever

When you gotta go, you gotta go, green signal or not

[palkanetoijala31]

a change from the District/Circle to westbound Central at Notting Hill Gate? you're giving more of your route away! (nice to see it though...)

Although i knew their entire route obviously i would even dream of using anything in it that iain likes as a matter of fact i have suggested improvements to it to suit the ways he does the tube challenging (an interesting point that was brought up on the day geoff is that u wont reveal ur winning 275 route despite it being irrevelant to todays challenging)