tubechallenge.com

Can anyone explain why a lot of the official times in the 1960's are considerably faster that the current 275
The times are around 15 and 16 hours and some of those are for 277...

I have often wondered this ...

The only thing I can think of is that the rules did not prohibit private transport.

How else would people have done it?

Teleportation?

Maybe they had 1-minute frequencies to every station on the network. Including Ongar, MHE, Olympia, Chesham and Woodford via Hainault.

Or maybe not. My guess would be private transport also.

Well I'll stick to teleportation and its utopian idealisms. Or something.

Perhaps they used same Tardis we had on Friday

It was indeed private transportation up until the rules changed. And also there werent peak time services for a while.

I seem to remember that at one stage there were three records...one all-Underground, one Underground + Bus and the other private transport. They were "A", "B" and "C" records, but in the end only an "A" and "B" survived. Obviously using taxis and cars between terminals saved time. However by the time that we at LURS were involved at the request of Guinness in supervising what was to become a new record (Heathrow 123 having opened) in the early Eighties, it was just the "A" record with public transport. To assist the intrepid team the District Controller was asked to hold the last Upminster at Monument...! Those were of course the days of Ongar starts at 6.00 or so, finish at Upminster, on a day when the Olympia service was running and Shoreditch was open plus Aldwych. So a weekday, one of the few Exhibition days per year. I think the Watford Bakerloo service had finished but am not sure...it may have been to Queens Park that occasion.

Yes I remember the 1980 attempys as I was out there on behalf of LURS when I caught them at Hammersmith to Turnham Green then they went down to Richmond and back to TG thence to Heathrow from memory. I think Desmond Croome was invoived with "Roving" as we called it when I was on the Publications Committee. So far as I can recall the Rovers were not part of LURS but by 1980 had been subsumed into LURS and tghen a Roving Committee was formed that oversaw all attempts and then sent the details to the McWhirters.