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…
