My first Full Network Challenge | 18:21:56 | 23/08/2025
Posted: 05 Sep 2025, 21:34
After a dozen attempts at the Random 15, and one attempt at an alternative challenge (still holding the top time for the Royal Challenge!), I finally felt ready to attempt the Full Network. Let's get into the stats first.
Date of attempt: Saturday 23 August 2025.
Stations visited: 272/272.
Time: 18 hours, 21 minutes, 56 seconds.
Start: Chesham.
End: Heathrow Terminal 5.
Stations visited as pass-through: Chancery Lane (closed due to staff shortages).
Stations visited on non-LUL services under "same tracks" rule: South Kenton, North Wembley, Wembley Central, Stonebridge Park, Harlesden, Willeseden Junction, Kensal Green, Gunnersbury, Kew Gardens, Richmond.
Even after joining this forum, there was a time when I thought I would never attempt a Full Network Challenge. Coming up with a competitive route, finding a day on which I was available and was suitable for doing the challenge, arranging getting to the start station and home from the end station, the logistics of food/drink/toilets, the longer runs e.g. High Barnet to Cockfosters, and the stamina to keep going all day all presented as challenges that put me off doing it.
Earlier this year while looking through this forum I noticed that the current record time (17:46) is over two hours slower than the pre-Battersea record. Curious to know what kind of effort would be required to get close to that old time, I started compiling a timetable, based on the Labyrinth route and the published working timetables. And to my surprise the timetable I came up with was not just faster than 17:46 - it was sub-17 hours.
The route I used is based on that timetable. It takes place on a Saturday mainly because I still haven't found a good route that works on Olympia-restricted weekdays, but Saturdays have other advantages too: cheaper tickets, fewer passengers at busiest times, and an opportunity to do the northern end of the Metropolitan very efficiently if starting at Chesham at 06:00. The only variations I made are relatively minor - reversing the order of some route segments based on what works with the current timetables. The duration on paper is 16:28, 78 minutes faster than the current record.
By this stage I'd changed my mind from "never" doing it to "maybe one day". But then an opportunity arose for this Saturday. The stars aligned such that I would have no family commitments on the same Saturday that there would be no line closures across the whole of the Underground. The reason for this special service is a busy Bank Holiday weekend with lots of events but the biggest one (Notting Hill Carnival) is on the Sunday and Monday, leaving Saturday free and clear. So I had to take the chance.
----
The day started with an early check-out from the Premier Inn at Rickmansworth, in time to catch the first Chesham service of the day. The train has a scheduled 14-minute turnaround at Chesham but I dared not step off the train for more than a second, lest it for some reason leave early and ruin my day before it had even begun! As the top of the hour approached a few passengers boarded, and I was half surprised not to see other tube challengers taking the same start as me, given the favourable conditions of attempting the challenge on this day.
The doors closed at 06:00:08, and I started the stopwatches running on both my phone and my watch. In addition to those I also kept a running log of which trains I’d been on, and the times I boarded and alighted from each, but I did not bother with the full GWR evidential requirements.
After a comfortable double-back at Chalfont & Latimer, and a less comfortable one at Amersham, I was starting to get into the rhythm of the challenge. I arrived at Moor Park with eight minutes to spare before my Watford train, peered down the platform to the information screen, only to see no mention of it. Sure enough, 06:45 came and went and there was no train. That’s an instant 15-minute delay to wait for the next train. It took me a minute to realise that meant the train would also not be waiting for me at Watford to double-back on, so that’s actually a half-hour delay.
It felt pretty bad to immediately be so far behind schedule so early on in the day. I had a buffer of 78 minutes to the record time, and 110 minutes to the last Terminal 4 train of the day. I definitely didn’t expect to stay on schedule for all 272 stations, but now 30 minutes of that was eaten up when I was only at station number 6. What’s more – and this sounds ridiculous in hindsight – I hadn’t made any plans for what to do should I fall behind schedule.
Luckily I had plenty of time to look over the timetables on the way up to Watford and back. It turns out the timetables are fairly regular, so I could easily just follow my planned times plus 30 minutes. That idea did not last long. As we pulled in to Harrow-on-the-Hill I saw the Uxbridge train I wanted on the opposite platform. I raced across the bridge but I was too late. That train is scheduled to wait at Harrow-on-the-Hill for 3 minutes, but it seemed to leave as soon as it was ready.
I felt time was slipping away. I made it to Uxbridge and back to Ickenham for my first run of the day to West Ruislip. On the Central line train I made a decision to skip White City. This would have repercussions later in the day, but it meant I could stay on the +30 timetable through the upcoming low-frequency sections of the Piccadilly and Bakerloo.
After that it was easier to stay on the +30 timetable. In fact it was five hours and 15 trains later, and well past station #100, when I next picked up a delay that I couldn’t make up. There had been severe delays on the northern end of the Northern line in the morning, which was tolerable at the time because I wasn’t scheduled to use it till the afternoon. My service from Battersea Power Station to Kennington was on-time but at the southbound platform there was a 5-minute wait for the next Morden service. This put me a train behind at Wimbledon, which itself was delayed by 3 minutes. My Piccadilly line train to Cockfosters then picked up another 4 minutes’ delay.
All this meant I needed a really tight connection from Cockfosters to High Barnet in order to avoid falling back to the +45 timetable. I had scheduled a fairly slow connection here, planning for the worst case in which I’d have to go the whole distance on foot at my slow jogging pace. Some tactical bus usage here could make up serious time.
There was no point waiting 12 minutes for a 384 so I ran down the hill to New Barnet, grateful not to be doing this connection in the opposite direction. As I made it to the bus stop on Station Road, where five different routes all go to High Barnet, I checked the live departures to see a 9-minute wait. Resigned to the +45 timetable, I chose instead to half-walk/half-jog up the hill to High Barnet, only overtaken by a bus at the very end.
Despite the earlier Northern line delays, I ticked off Mill Hill East without any problems. In fact, the return journey turned out to be a Bank branch service instead of the scheduled Charing Cross branch, which worked out in my favour. The next problem came at the northbound Jubilee platform at Baker Street. Heavy crowds were heading to the Coldplay concert at Wembley, and possibly as a consequence the Jubilee line was experiencing delays. Not only was there a 4-minute wait for the first train, but it was a Wembley Park terminator. I managed to squeeze on and change at Wembley Park for the following Stanmore service, where I arrived 54 minutes behind schedule.
A decent connection to Edgware soon saw me out at the Eastern end of the Central line. I had a smooth double-back at Epping but it gained me nothing as I then endured the inevitable 10-minute wait at Woodford, forcing me back to the +60 minute timetable. At least I could take the opportunity to fill up my water bottle at the fountain outside the station.
On the Victoria line back towards Central I evaluated my options for picking up White City. My timetable involved transferring from Shepherd’s Bush to Olympia, but visiting White City first would cause me to miss my desired Olympia service and put me back to +80 minutes, and behind the record. The remaining stations were basically the Hammersmith branch, Olympia, the Richmond branch, and the Heathrow branch. So I planned an alternative route on the fly: transfer from White City to Wood Lane, go down to Hammersmith then double back. A flick through the timetables suggested this plan would be faster than waiting at Olympia. My later analysis would show this indeed should be 10 minutes faster. But this was also when the delays started piling up.
When I got to Wood Lane there was a problem. I was expecting a southbound train in 3 minutes, but the information display forecast a 9-minute wait. My second cancelled train of the day. I made some quick calculations in my head and decided to take the next northbound train instead. That was a mistake: the 10-minute-faster option was actually still available if I’d waited for the next southbound train, albeit with an additional tight connection. Down to +80.
Having just missed the opportunity to get a train up at Edgware Road thanks to some slow-moving inebriated passengers blocking the stairs, I made the transfer from High Street Kensington to Olympia in plenty of time, thanks to a passing bus. The Olympia train was on time and I changed platforms at Earl’s Court to the best of my ability, but still just missed my tight connection. Down to +90.
At Hammersmith I made a very good connection from the District line to the H&C, but felt a bit silly doubling back at Shepherd’s Bush Market and repeating the interchange in the opposite direction only a few minutes later. (On this occasion I was nearly taken out by a cyclist with no lights at nighttime going the wrong way around the Hammersmith gyratory!) When I got to the platform, more bad news: the Richmond train I was expecting was cancelled. Down to +100.
On the Ealing Broadway service I was deciding between waiting for the next Richmond train or using the Overground to visit Richmond. It was late in the day and I’d already done more runs than I’d expected so I wasn’t relishing the Chiswick Park–Gunnersbury transfer. In theory, waiting wasn’t any slower but it would be tempting fate for another cancelled train or missed connection to cause further delay. So I psyched myself up for “one last run”. It was a transfer I’d never made before and it was a bit hazardous in the dark with uneven surfaces on poorly-lit streets, but I dragged myself there at light jogging pace.
It looked for a moment that my hard work would be rewarded: the cancelled District line service was still showing on the display. Presumably it was just a data propagation error between LU and NR, since the service never showed up. Instead, I took the following Mildmay line train, and got a good double-back onto another Mildmay train.
My plan was to wait at Gunnersbury for a District line service to Turnham Green where I could change for a Piccadilly line train (it was after 22:30 and I’d already visited Chiswick Park). Checking the live data, I saw that there was actually a late-running District line Ealing Broadway service that might just get me a train up at Acton Town. The catch was that I’d need to do another run: the run back to Chiswick Park that I’d just made, and 50% faster.
I don’t know how I did it but I did. I pushed myself all the way, visions of the doors closing in front of me spurring me on. As I ran into the ticket hall I could hear the train’s brakes. And when I got to the top of the stairs, to my relief, the doors were still open, and I made it to Acton Town only 15 minutes after arriving at Richmond.
There was no sign of the Terminal 4 train at Acton Town. Maybe I missed it or maybe it was cancelled. But that really didn’t matter. I was going to complete the challenge. There were no more runs and only one cross-platform interchange left. I spent the 12 minute wait for the penultimate Terminal 4 train of the day double- and triple-checking that I hadn’t missed any stations.
To my surprise, at Terminal 4 there was no prolonged wait. The doors closed and we were off, arriving at Terminals 2&3 three minutes ahead of schedule. It didn’t do any good: the next Terminal 5 train was cancelled (my fourth cancellation of the day), but after a 19-minute wait there was finally a train. Eventually (and another 2 minutes later than scheduled), I arrived at Terminal 5, and stopped the clock.
----
One of my objectives was to get a feel for how much delay is realistic to expect from the route I worked out. Obviously nothing can be scientifically concluded from a single data point, but I think I got average luck: some missed trains, including a costly one on the outer Met, could count as bad luck, but I consider myself lucky to have completed at all. I was on the penultimate Terminal 4 train of the day - one or two more delays could have made me miss the last one. The disruption I faced was more along the lines of individual trains either being cancelled or having a small delay, rather than severe disruption or lines being suspended.
I surprised myself with what I achieved on the runs. Several of them were faster than I thought myself capable of, and I was impressed with my ability to keep going even at the end of the day when I was tired and there was only a small chance of gaining anything.
I will definitely attempt this again, probably next year on one of those rare Saturdays without engineering work. In the meantime I have lots to work on: route improvements, backup plans, physical fitness, equipment, and logistics.
Most importantly, I really enjoyed the experience. There are parts that are a mental challenge, parts that are a physical challenge, parts that are a social challenge (navigating around a station without making too many opps), and plenty of rest time inbetween. As well as seeing the full network – I’d never been to any of the termini clockwise from Uxbridge to Hainault before – I was on the Underground from 5:20am to 2am the next morning, seeing everything from early morning commuters at Chesham to crowd management at Wembley Park, locals making short trips in Dagenham, and the Night Tube home.
Date of attempt: Saturday 23 August 2025.
Stations visited: 272/272.
Time: 18 hours, 21 minutes, 56 seconds.
Start: Chesham.
End: Heathrow Terminal 5.
Stations visited as pass-through: Chancery Lane (closed due to staff shortages).
Stations visited on non-LUL services under "same tracks" rule: South Kenton, North Wembley, Wembley Central, Stonebridge Park, Harlesden, Willeseden Junction, Kensal Green, Gunnersbury, Kew Gardens, Richmond.
Even after joining this forum, there was a time when I thought I would never attempt a Full Network Challenge. Coming up with a competitive route, finding a day on which I was available and was suitable for doing the challenge, arranging getting to the start station and home from the end station, the logistics of food/drink/toilets, the longer runs e.g. High Barnet to Cockfosters, and the stamina to keep going all day all presented as challenges that put me off doing it.
Earlier this year while looking through this forum I noticed that the current record time (17:46) is over two hours slower than the pre-Battersea record. Curious to know what kind of effort would be required to get close to that old time, I started compiling a timetable, based on the Labyrinth route and the published working timetables. And to my surprise the timetable I came up with was not just faster than 17:46 - it was sub-17 hours.
The route I used is based on that timetable. It takes place on a Saturday mainly because I still haven't found a good route that works on Olympia-restricted weekdays, but Saturdays have other advantages too: cheaper tickets, fewer passengers at busiest times, and an opportunity to do the northern end of the Metropolitan very efficiently if starting at Chesham at 06:00. The only variations I made are relatively minor - reversing the order of some route segments based on what works with the current timetables. The duration on paper is 16:28, 78 minutes faster than the current record.
By this stage I'd changed my mind from "never" doing it to "maybe one day". But then an opportunity arose for this Saturday. The stars aligned such that I would have no family commitments on the same Saturday that there would be no line closures across the whole of the Underground. The reason for this special service is a busy Bank Holiday weekend with lots of events but the biggest one (Notting Hill Carnival) is on the Sunday and Monday, leaving Saturday free and clear. So I had to take the chance.
----
The day started with an early check-out from the Premier Inn at Rickmansworth, in time to catch the first Chesham service of the day. The train has a scheduled 14-minute turnaround at Chesham but I dared not step off the train for more than a second, lest it for some reason leave early and ruin my day before it had even begun! As the top of the hour approached a few passengers boarded, and I was half surprised not to see other tube challengers taking the same start as me, given the favourable conditions of attempting the challenge on this day.
The doors closed at 06:00:08, and I started the stopwatches running on both my phone and my watch. In addition to those I also kept a running log of which trains I’d been on, and the times I boarded and alighted from each, but I did not bother with the full GWR evidential requirements.
After a comfortable double-back at Chalfont & Latimer, and a less comfortable one at Amersham, I was starting to get into the rhythm of the challenge. I arrived at Moor Park with eight minutes to spare before my Watford train, peered down the platform to the information screen, only to see no mention of it. Sure enough, 06:45 came and went and there was no train. That’s an instant 15-minute delay to wait for the next train. It took me a minute to realise that meant the train would also not be waiting for me at Watford to double-back on, so that’s actually a half-hour delay.
It felt pretty bad to immediately be so far behind schedule so early on in the day. I had a buffer of 78 minutes to the record time, and 110 minutes to the last Terminal 4 train of the day. I definitely didn’t expect to stay on schedule for all 272 stations, but now 30 minutes of that was eaten up when I was only at station number 6. What’s more – and this sounds ridiculous in hindsight – I hadn’t made any plans for what to do should I fall behind schedule.
Luckily I had plenty of time to look over the timetables on the way up to Watford and back. It turns out the timetables are fairly regular, so I could easily just follow my planned times plus 30 minutes. That idea did not last long. As we pulled in to Harrow-on-the-Hill I saw the Uxbridge train I wanted on the opposite platform. I raced across the bridge but I was too late. That train is scheduled to wait at Harrow-on-the-Hill for 3 minutes, but it seemed to leave as soon as it was ready.
I felt time was slipping away. I made it to Uxbridge and back to Ickenham for my first run of the day to West Ruislip. On the Central line train I made a decision to skip White City. This would have repercussions later in the day, but it meant I could stay on the +30 timetable through the upcoming low-frequency sections of the Piccadilly and Bakerloo.
After that it was easier to stay on the +30 timetable. In fact it was five hours and 15 trains later, and well past station #100, when I next picked up a delay that I couldn’t make up. There had been severe delays on the northern end of the Northern line in the morning, which was tolerable at the time because I wasn’t scheduled to use it till the afternoon. My service from Battersea Power Station to Kennington was on-time but at the southbound platform there was a 5-minute wait for the next Morden service. This put me a train behind at Wimbledon, which itself was delayed by 3 minutes. My Piccadilly line train to Cockfosters then picked up another 4 minutes’ delay.
All this meant I needed a really tight connection from Cockfosters to High Barnet in order to avoid falling back to the +45 timetable. I had scheduled a fairly slow connection here, planning for the worst case in which I’d have to go the whole distance on foot at my slow jogging pace. Some tactical bus usage here could make up serious time.
There was no point waiting 12 minutes for a 384 so I ran down the hill to New Barnet, grateful not to be doing this connection in the opposite direction. As I made it to the bus stop on Station Road, where five different routes all go to High Barnet, I checked the live departures to see a 9-minute wait. Resigned to the +45 timetable, I chose instead to half-walk/half-jog up the hill to High Barnet, only overtaken by a bus at the very end.
Despite the earlier Northern line delays, I ticked off Mill Hill East without any problems. In fact, the return journey turned out to be a Bank branch service instead of the scheduled Charing Cross branch, which worked out in my favour. The next problem came at the northbound Jubilee platform at Baker Street. Heavy crowds were heading to the Coldplay concert at Wembley, and possibly as a consequence the Jubilee line was experiencing delays. Not only was there a 4-minute wait for the first train, but it was a Wembley Park terminator. I managed to squeeze on and change at Wembley Park for the following Stanmore service, where I arrived 54 minutes behind schedule.
A decent connection to Edgware soon saw me out at the Eastern end of the Central line. I had a smooth double-back at Epping but it gained me nothing as I then endured the inevitable 10-minute wait at Woodford, forcing me back to the +60 minute timetable. At least I could take the opportunity to fill up my water bottle at the fountain outside the station.
On the Victoria line back towards Central I evaluated my options for picking up White City. My timetable involved transferring from Shepherd’s Bush to Olympia, but visiting White City first would cause me to miss my desired Olympia service and put me back to +80 minutes, and behind the record. The remaining stations were basically the Hammersmith branch, Olympia, the Richmond branch, and the Heathrow branch. So I planned an alternative route on the fly: transfer from White City to Wood Lane, go down to Hammersmith then double back. A flick through the timetables suggested this plan would be faster than waiting at Olympia. My later analysis would show this indeed should be 10 minutes faster. But this was also when the delays started piling up.
When I got to Wood Lane there was a problem. I was expecting a southbound train in 3 minutes, but the information display forecast a 9-minute wait. My second cancelled train of the day. I made some quick calculations in my head and decided to take the next northbound train instead. That was a mistake: the 10-minute-faster option was actually still available if I’d waited for the next southbound train, albeit with an additional tight connection. Down to +80.
Having just missed the opportunity to get a train up at Edgware Road thanks to some slow-moving inebriated passengers blocking the stairs, I made the transfer from High Street Kensington to Olympia in plenty of time, thanks to a passing bus. The Olympia train was on time and I changed platforms at Earl’s Court to the best of my ability, but still just missed my tight connection. Down to +90.
At Hammersmith I made a very good connection from the District line to the H&C, but felt a bit silly doubling back at Shepherd’s Bush Market and repeating the interchange in the opposite direction only a few minutes later. (On this occasion I was nearly taken out by a cyclist with no lights at nighttime going the wrong way around the Hammersmith gyratory!) When I got to the platform, more bad news: the Richmond train I was expecting was cancelled. Down to +100.
On the Ealing Broadway service I was deciding between waiting for the next Richmond train or using the Overground to visit Richmond. It was late in the day and I’d already done more runs than I’d expected so I wasn’t relishing the Chiswick Park–Gunnersbury transfer. In theory, waiting wasn’t any slower but it would be tempting fate for another cancelled train or missed connection to cause further delay. So I psyched myself up for “one last run”. It was a transfer I’d never made before and it was a bit hazardous in the dark with uneven surfaces on poorly-lit streets, but I dragged myself there at light jogging pace.
It looked for a moment that my hard work would be rewarded: the cancelled District line service was still showing on the display. Presumably it was just a data propagation error between LU and NR, since the service never showed up. Instead, I took the following Mildmay line train, and got a good double-back onto another Mildmay train.
My plan was to wait at Gunnersbury for a District line service to Turnham Green where I could change for a Piccadilly line train (it was after 22:30 and I’d already visited Chiswick Park). Checking the live data, I saw that there was actually a late-running District line Ealing Broadway service that might just get me a train up at Acton Town. The catch was that I’d need to do another run: the run back to Chiswick Park that I’d just made, and 50% faster.
I don’t know how I did it but I did. I pushed myself all the way, visions of the doors closing in front of me spurring me on. As I ran into the ticket hall I could hear the train’s brakes. And when I got to the top of the stairs, to my relief, the doors were still open, and I made it to Acton Town only 15 minutes after arriving at Richmond.
There was no sign of the Terminal 4 train at Acton Town. Maybe I missed it or maybe it was cancelled. But that really didn’t matter. I was going to complete the challenge. There were no more runs and only one cross-platform interchange left. I spent the 12 minute wait for the penultimate Terminal 4 train of the day double- and triple-checking that I hadn’t missed any stations.
To my surprise, at Terminal 4 there was no prolonged wait. The doors closed and we were off, arriving at Terminals 2&3 three minutes ahead of schedule. It didn’t do any good: the next Terminal 5 train was cancelled (my fourth cancellation of the day), but after a 19-minute wait there was finally a train. Eventually (and another 2 minutes later than scheduled), I arrived at Terminal 5, and stopped the clock.
----
One of my objectives was to get a feel for how much delay is realistic to expect from the route I worked out. Obviously nothing can be scientifically concluded from a single data point, but I think I got average luck: some missed trains, including a costly one on the outer Met, could count as bad luck, but I consider myself lucky to have completed at all. I was on the penultimate Terminal 4 train of the day - one or two more delays could have made me miss the last one. The disruption I faced was more along the lines of individual trains either being cancelled or having a small delay, rather than severe disruption or lines being suspended.
I surprised myself with what I achieved on the runs. Several of them were faster than I thought myself capable of, and I was impressed with my ability to keep going even at the end of the day when I was tired and there was only a small chance of gaining anything.
I will definitely attempt this again, probably next year on one of those rare Saturdays without engineering work. In the meantime I have lots to work on: route improvements, backup plans, physical fitness, equipment, and logistics.
Most importantly, I really enjoyed the experience. There are parts that are a mental challenge, parts that are a physical challenge, parts that are a social challenge (navigating around a station without making too many opps), and plenty of rest time inbetween. As well as seeing the full network – I’d never been to any of the termini clockwise from Uxbridge to Hainault before – I was on the Underground from 5:20am to 2am the next morning, seeing everything from early morning commuters at Chesham to crowd management at Wembley Park, locals making short trips in Dagenham, and the Night Tube home.