Random 15 Championship - Round 3 - 28th November

[jamesthegill]

I like the fact that one of my flippant, random comments has been taken as gospel

[tangy]

Shame we couldnt start just a little later then i could take the 1st train to go from Swanage to Waterloo since 1972

Where did you get that info from?! As it is quite clearly wrong!

The very first through passenger train from Swanage to Waterloo since 1972 was run by UK Railtours/EWS on Wednesday 1st April 2009 with a repeat train the next day (I was on this second repeat train myself).

If you said the first through train FROM Waterloo to Swanage then yes, you would be correct as these UK Railtour trains ran from Victoria to Swanage and back to Waterloo.

[Going Underground]

When is the poll closing 12:00 has it's nose in front at the moment

Haha I see that GU has no comment on Sam's new arrival but is instead determined to wrench the topic back on track.

I am far too much of a gentleman do get involved in such gossip and rumour John

[palkanetoijala31]

Shame we couldnt start just a little later then i could take the 1st train to go from Swanage to Waterloo since 1972

Where did you get that info from?! As it is quite clearly wrong!

The very first through passenger train from Swanage to Waterloo since 1972 was run by UK Railtours/EWS on Wednesday 1st April 2009 with a repeat train the next day (I was on this second repeat train myself).

If you said the first through train FROM Waterloo to Swanage then yes, you would be correct as these UK Railtour trains ran from Victoria to Swanage and back to Waterloo.

Where i did get the year wrong it was 1966 the line closed in 1972 ur right in 1 sense it isnt the 1st through passenger train as ur quite correct 1st april 2009 was a db train i believe this is the 1st steam train through for 43 years.

[jamesthegill]

Which pub are we all meeting at? There's half a dozen public Houses Of The Rising Sun in London.

[Starkey7]

Yeah, it's within two hundred yards of Barbican station - to the west-south-west I think. Down a little road called Cloth Fair.

[jamesthegill]

Oh! I know where that is, it's just up the road from Puregroove!

[Starkey7]

Missed a plug-o-tunity here too: http://darts.scriv.me.uk/venues.php?venue=08 has a mini-map

Your website is amazing, Matt.

[Starkey7]

In fact, granted I've only played five matches there, but I've won all of them!!!

[Soup Dragon]

An interesting batch of stations; Clapham Common, Queensway, Borough, Putney Bridge, North Greenwich, Regents Park, Bermondsey, Knightsbridge, Edgware Road x 2, Stamford Brook, Victoria, Euston Square, East Putney, Kilburn Park.
I teamed up with Kevin & John and I was very happy with the route we settled on, however a 22 minute wait at Stamford Brook put paid to our chances of victory. The result was as follows:

1. 2:56:09 Steven Karahan & Tom Wood (East Putney)
2. 3:06:57 Peter Smythe (Kilburn Park)
3. 3:10:46 Antony & Kevin Brown & John Stark (North Greenwich)
4. 3:16:06 Martin Hazel (Stamford Brook)
5. 3:22:52 Andi James & Sara Wearn (J) (North Greenwich)
6. 4:04:51 Richie Graham (North Greenwich)

The pub after was good fun until the twat behind the bar decided to kick us out, I'm not sure what his problem was but obviously our money wasn't good enough for him

[joy54]

Decided at very short notice I was going to attend and teamed up with Edgemaster at Clapham. We ran down the stairs at Clapham Common straight onto a northbound Northern Line and hoped that Clapham South wasn't in the hat. Thankfully it wasn't and we quickly came up with a rough route and refined it as we went north. Our first change was at London Bridge onto the Jubilee Line along with Tangy and greatkingrat and we were quite lucky here with a 1 minute wait on a line running with a 6 minute frequency. We took that to North Greenwich for the double back and arrived on to opposite platform considerably quicker than the other two, it turns out the station is pretty confusing with regard to changing from Eastbound to Westbound and it just happened that me and Edgemaster had just been lucky with our door position. A 3 minute wait here was quickly absolved and we were on our way back west, although we realised greatkingrat and tangy were not doing as we were as they headed to a carriage towards the front of the train. We left the train back at London Bridge and headed back towards the Northern Line and caught a train within 30 seconds of arrival onto the platform to Moorgate, here we were very lucky as we thought we had just missed a H&C (only trains running on the top of the Circle that day) but it turned out it was in the opposite direction and thankfully a H&C arrived just as we finished climbing the stairs out of the underpass. This took us swiftly to Great Portland Street for the quick run to Regents Park on the way but Edgemaster accidentally bumped into some chavs and left them shouting and swearing as we ran into the station, this caused us no major delay and we ran down the stairs to the Bakerloo platforms although I ended up going to the northbound by accident, when I eventually found the southbound one was just pulling in for the short hop to Oxford Circus. The cross-platform here was no smooth but luckily no train was missed and we had IIRC a 2 minute wait for a Victoria Line train to Victoria for the double back. Again at Victoria however the cross-platform was not smooth and this time a train was in, it was being held for some reason thank god and we just clambered into the correct carriage as the doors closed. Up to Green Park for the dreaded Piccadilly Line run, which was perfectly fine for us, but seemed to of given some other teams issues earlier in the day due to some one way operations that had been previously put in place. We arrived onto the platform to see a train arriving for the longer ride to Hammersmith/Barons Court for the change to the District. Here we were EXTREMELY lucky as just as we were about to depart Barons Court (after about a 20 second wait) Edgemaster spots the District we need in the distance, we deliberate for a few seconds on what to do and eventually decide to get off, this proved to be a great decision as the District came in and then between Barons Court and Hammersmith overtakes the Piccadilly which has been held outside Hammersmith for another service in front. We then arrive at Stamford Brook for one of two long waits on the R15, we had just missed two Eastbound Districts in the space of two minutes so we knew we'd have a bit of a wait, in the end 8 minutes. However the next change was very sexy at Earls Court, cross platform onto a Wimbleware, which then proceeds to overtake our service (which was due to terminate at HSK). This we take to NHG but first we discuss what to do about Queensway, there are two options, Central to Queensway, run to Bayswater and then District to Paddington or Central to Lancaster Gate and then run to Paddington. The former would be quicker if we made a sexy change at Bayswater, so a quick check of the iPhone tells us there is a District 5 minutes behind and one 14 minutes behind. A few calculations and we realise if we want to do the Bayswater change we must make the 5 minutes behind District otherwise it wasn't worth it. We get a very sexy change at NHG straight onto a Central and arrive into Queensway with 2 and a half minutes before the District was to be at Bayswater, we risk it and hope for a lift to take us to the top, otherwise we know we've blown it. It turned out we just missed a lift and therefore cut our losses and ran back to the Central Line platforms for a 2 minute wait for the following service to Lancaster Gate. In the end the debacle cost us 4 minutes and probably more later on, as the next few changes were the worst of the day. We arrive at Paddington, just missing a Bakerloo, the following one is 2 minutes behind and contains Soup Dragon, Going Underground and Starkey all of whom we can't quite read on whether they were pleased or not about what they thought we had done and had to do. We went with them to Kilburn Park for the double-back and got straight back on another Bakerloo to Edgware Road, ran to the other Edgware Road and waited about 8 minutes for our District to leave for the final uneventful run to East Putney (during which Edgemaster was convinced he saw Andi at Earls Court, who I duly texted and found in fact he was at Borough!). We calculated if we had not made the mistake at Queenway we would likely have made the service 10 minutes previously as we only missed it by around 2 minutes at Edgware Road. Overall however luck was on our side and from the stories of some other people it sounded as if it could have been a lot worse. I ended back at the pub way before anyone else after a journey of about an hour from East Putney, so knew we must have been in good stead (unless of course people had gone for food again as happened previously) and of course we were in good stead and won by 10 minutes.

Now that only 4 points separates the top three, its all to play for!

[Sam]

Am not happy with the bar manager one bit. I fear he has totally scuppered my chances in the darts league. Just when I was finding some form, he goes and chucks us out. I mean, come on, own up, who did it because they were scared I was catching them in the league?

[Steeevooo]

I still believe that it was the fear that the Darts Dream Team was putting into all of you that caused someone to adopt foul play

[RichieG]

Taken the following text from my website which I've just spent the good part of the last half hour to fortyfive minutes typing! (http://www.stupidstupidity.co.uk/tube-c ... mber-2009/)

Saturday 28 November wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t a rainy day (except in the evening) (and the morning come to think of it), it wasn’t that cold (again except in the morning).

Perfect conditions, one would say, for the third round of the 2009-10 Random 15 Challenge.

The starting station was Clapham Common, and at 12.00 not-quite-sharp, the teams departed to take in the sights of another 14 randomly drawn stations on the London Underground network.

So what about me?

Well, I quickly scanned the list to see if any stations south of Clapham Common were drawn, and not seeing any hopped onto a northbound Northern Line train as far as Stockwell. From Stockwell, I changed to a northbound Victoria Line train.

It was at this point that I realised that it would have probably been more suitable to remain on the Northern Line as far as London Bridge, but alas I was like a sheep and followed everybody else.

However, not to be put off too much by that little error, I stayed on the Victoria Line as far as Green Park, taking in Victoria on the way through. Changing to a southbound Piccadilly Line train with the intention of staying on as far as Hammersmith. More on that to come. I passed through Knightsbridge (and the actual time (not my running time) was at that point 1:23.45 – noted because it was quite an interesting time. I may do a proper blog post about that some time; not just randomly but there is something I’ve been thinking of for ages with it, usually as I drift off to sleep!). There was a bit of a wait at Knightsbridge before we departed, but not to worry. On to South Kensington next, where once again we had a bit of a wait. This time we were told why – it was because the train behind us needed to catch up. Never mind that this particular train was full up and couldn’t get anybody else on – although this is by my reckoning, perhaps TfL has different ideas of Maximum Capicity…

We left, the train door hitting me on the head as they closed. Through Gloucester Road, and onto Earl’s Court. Once again, we waited for ages here for no apparant reason before the tannoy kicked in saying that because of ‘Passenger Action’ on the train – once again – behind ours, we would be held up. I decided at this point – a decision that could well have effected my time for the worse – to bail out off the Piccadilly Line and head upstairs to the District Line where I could catch a train either to Stamford Brook or down to East Putney.

So, up onto the District Line platforms I went, where if Kensington Olympia was one of our stations I would have had a perfect change. Instead, I had to wait for a stupid amount of time for ANY westbound District Line trains (at one point I regretted bailing out of the Piccadilly Line then realised that I would probably have had the same wait at Hammersmith) before a Wimbledon branch train turned up. I got on, and quickly pulled out my London Map to see whether to get to Richmond station I should alight at East Putney (to get an SWT train from Putney) or Wimbledon (also to get an SWT train). I cursed the fact that I didn’t have a ‘London Connections’ map but not to worry. My road map showed me that I should, to get to Richmond, go from Putney. So, down the Wimbledon Branch of the District Line we rolled, only for the announcement that because of the delays on the District Line that day, the train would be stopped at – of all places – Putney Bridge. So at Putney Bridge I, along with the entire contents of the train, alighted and waited a further ten minutes for the next District Line train to show up so I could continue down the line one more stop to East Putney. At this point, I alighted and left the station for the first run of the day, from East Putney to Putney NR. At this station, I was a little irritated at its layout. A four platform station with four tracks. However, both the Eastbound and the Westbound directions had two lines, but to get from one of the lines to the other, one would have to use the footbridge. Also, the only displays on the station concourse at the top of the stairs only showed me which trains were heading into Waterloo, not out of there. So, I just took a gamble, went onto the island platform in the middle, and as a train pulled in checked the platform’s destination display which told me that this would indeed get me to Richmond.

Except that it didn’t.

While the main destination of the train didn’t change, it took a different route and instead of going through Richmond, it went the other way. So, I pulled out my London Street Atlas again and checked it. It looked like the best plan of action for me then would be to get off at Kew Bridge and hope that there was an easy way to get to the nearest Underground station, which was Gunnersbury. There was – as I got off the train at Kew Bridge there was one of those ‘Continuing Your Journey’ posters which gave me the information that I needed: a bus which would leave just outside of Kew Bridge and onto Gunnersbury. So it was, again after too long a wait, this bus that I caught, where I alighted at Gunnersbury to return ‘on track’ (as it were) on the District Line back into Central London. Once again, there was a bit of a wait here but by now I had got used to that.

(The bus would also have called at Stamford Brook station, but I decided not to continue on to there but to alight at Gunnersbury. It was while waiting at Gunnersbury that I realised how stupid a decision that was…)

So, back onto the District Line as far as Hammersmith, taking in Stamford Brook on the way. At Hammersmith, I went between the Picc/Dist station to the H&C station – which seemed a lot shorter than usual, I wondered if they had changed the layout at the P/D station – with the initial aim of going as far as Edgware Road.

While sitting on the train, I decided to take another look at my map with the 15 stations on it. I hadn’t done too well really. I was over an hour into the time, yet had only managed to cross off 5 stations. One of them was the starting station, and to of them were ajoining stations. OK, with the adjoining stations, I was booted off the train at the first one and had to wait to get on another train to get to the second one. To make matters worse, all the station announcements were telling me that ‘apart from the planned enginnering works’ (which had taken out the entire Circle Line and the District Line east of Earl’s Court plus others) ‘there [was] a good service running on all London Underground lines’. I still had to get Queensway station, almost isolated on the Central Line, and worse yet, Euston Square, which was isolated compared to the rest of the 10 remaining stations. There were also a number of stations still in the East of the city that needed claming – again I started to wish I had continued on the Northern Line from Stockwell instead of changing.

It was at this point that I decided to go weird. Why do things simply? I had already lost the challenge thanks to the problems I had at Earl’s Court and on the SWT line from Putney to Richmond/Kew Bridge. Alighting at Wood Lane, I ran down the road to White city station where I managed to get my first decent change of the day onto an Eastbound Central Line train which I took as far as Queensway. Having a lift all to myself at Queensway to the surface, I went down the road to Bayswater station, where I then had a long long wait again for a District Line to take me to Edgware Road. I started to wonder, with half the District Line out of service, and no Circle Line service either, why the rest of the District Line was having problems. Of course, this particular bit of the District Line is servec by H&C Line trains, which did put on extra services to service the northern half of the Circle as far as Whitechapel anyway. It was a bit of a mystery really, and it gave me something to think about other than my rapidly decreasing progress.

Eventually though, a train arrived which took me to Edgware Road (C/D/H&C) where I alighted and did the run to the other Edgware Road station on the Bakerloo Line, wondering as I did so why the current implementation of the London Underground/Overground Map has the two stations marked down as one. Still, from what I’ve heard and can gather, once the Circle extends in a couple of weeks, it will probably go back to being two separate stations. (Incidentally, the strip maps on the District Line have already got Hammersmith marked down as an interchange for the Circle Line.)

I now knew I was fairly alright – I have never had a bad connection on the Bakerloo Line. I toook the steps down to the platforms here, and there was a train just pulling into the platform as got there. I jumped onto the train which took me as far as Kilburn Park. Then I had my first ever non-perfect Bakerloo Line connection. It was worse than that. The doors closed on the opposite train just as the ones on mine opened. I realised then that my previous record of perfect connections had usually been at Warwick Avenue or Maida Vale, and I had never gone this far before. Oh well. It was only a 1 minute wait for the next train to head back down into the city.

Once again, I pulled out my map with the stations marked on it, ticking off Kilburn Park as I did so. I still had to work out how to fit in Euston Square into my grand scheme of things. It was up there, all out of the way. The other stations just needed me to stay on the Bakerloo as far as Elephant & Castle, then up the Northern again. Then I realised. I could change at street level between Regents Park and Great Portland Street. So, alighting at Regent’s Park, I once again hit the sunlight and started to go to Great Portland Street. My near miss of a train at Great Portland Street I am putting down to the fact that there was a fair bit of traffic on the roads that I had to cross to get between the two stations and no opportunity to cross without the inevitability of being hit by a car. So it was so that I got onto the platform at Great Portland Street to just see the doors slide closed on the train which then left without me.

It was quite a wait for the next one. During this time, 4 westbound trains went through, but no eastbound ones. When the eastbound one did show up, it was rather packed. We passed through Euston Square without issue, then the announcement came that the driver had been instructed to terminate at Moorgate (which was OK by me as that was where I was going to get off anyway) because he needed to head back westbound. This struck me as a little odd. I was waiting at Great Portland Street for about ten minutes, during which 4 westbound trains went through. This, to me, meant that there were people waiting even longer east of Moorgate to continue their journeys eastbound, yet there were many trains being sent westbound.

Anyway, it wasn’t my problem as I was getting off at Moorgate anyway, to head south on the Northern Line. I remained on until Borough, where I had a good change to double back up to London Bridge (which, incidentally, is the only station on the London Underground network with ‘London’ in its name) where I took the Jubilee Line eastbound taking in Bermondsey and finishing at North Greenwich at a rather awful time of 4:04.51.

This wasn’t a great time, and it was half an hour over the time of the next group up in the list. There were things I would have changed with my route, and having the District Line working would have been one of those things had I been in a position to do something with it!

Never mind though. I returned to the pub by way of remaining on the Jubilee Line as far as Canning Town, changing to the DLR to get into Bank (another decent change, shame it wasn’t part of the challenge really!). I returned to Moorgate on the Northern Line then took the H&C one stop to Barbican.

I will also mention what happened on the way back from the pub to Paddington station to return home. The H&C Line train came into Barbican, and H&C being the only trains running on the top of the Circle (the bottom of the Circle had no trains at all so it wasn’t all bad really) was expecting to have to cross Paddington from the H&C platforms to the main concourse. However, due to signalling problems at Hammersmith, the driver soon announced that he was gong to go to High Street Kensington instead of Hammersmith, meaning that this particular change of destination was actually a good one for me. The fact that I then had to wait ages for the Bristol train because of more signalling problems wasn’t quite so good, especailly as WHSmith had closed so I couldn’t buy a magazine…

[palkanetoijala31]

Right well the day started early for me driving up to New Milton to look for some darts then catching the train into Waterloo at 11.22am

This was Sara 1st r15 and knowing im not particulary good at them i was impressed at my time only some 12 minutes behind other people.

We started off going northbound to stockwell and taking the vic up to Green Park where we followed the Starkey,Kevin and Soupie down the corridors to the pic and a train was there on the platform we got a little caught up in the excitement and didnt relise our mistake it was a northbound train .

So we amended to go up to Kings cross and then hope the HC trains were running well they wernt bad and we took in euston square before getting out at GPS for a run to Regents Park

We then preceded Northbound to Kilburn Park for a double back somehow i think i got this station mixed up wiv Kensal Green i thought it was outside but we then went back to Edgware road and ran to the other 1 went to Bayswater ran from there to Queensway and down to Marble arch where we took a nice bus down to Hyde Park corner.

Piccardilly line down to Barons court waited a while for a district to Stamford Brook and got back to Earls Court for the Wimbledon branch always have good memories of East Putney and we walked down the road because of no bus stop because of roadworks we 1st took a 337 then changed to a 37 to Clapham Common station againthe rest was easy changed at LOndon Bridge for a train to North Greenwich and we never really ran very hard at all i must be getting better at these if only i could think on my feet better but im working on it.

Darts was really good fun and i was playing really well even going for x16 getting a d8 and saying bugger now do that again and i did! i managed to get into 3 finals before our inevitable chucking out incident but it was good fun Sara enjoyed the day as well but im keeping her away from the drink next time!especially as she used the w word on the barman at rising sun