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The Tube Challenge is the competition for the fastest time to travel to all
London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...
stations, tracked as a Guinness World Record since 1960. The goal is to visit all the stations on the system, not necessarily all the lines; participants may connect between stations on foot, or by using other forms of public transport. , the record for fastest completion (272 stations) is held by Robin Otter and Thomas Sheat, who completed the challenge in 17 hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds on 10 August 2024. A similar unofficial tube-related challenge is also completed where participants try and ride all 14
London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...
lines as quickly as possible. This challenge was dubbed: "The All Lines challenge".


History

The first recorded challenge took place in 1959. Although many people have attempted the challenge and held the record since, they have not always been credited in the record books. In the earlier days of the challenge, participants were permitted to use private forms of transport (such as a car or bike) to move between stations. This led to times of less than 16 hours in some earlier records, and Guinness later changed the rules to ban private transport. The following is a list of record holders that have appeared in the printed edition of the ''
Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...
''. The record did not appear in the book until its eighth edition. Between the 1960s and 1990s the record regularly appeared in the ''Guinness Book of Records'', initially listed under "Underground Railways – circuit of", but later just under "Railways" and then "Trains". Since the change of publishing style of the book from the 2001 edition onwards, the record – although frequently broken – has only twice appeared in printed form, in the 2008 edition, and then the 2015 edition. More recent records have tended to be published online instead. Since the record has not regularly been published in the book, there have been two broad configurations on the system – one for 275 stations, and one for 270 once the East London Line was no longer part of the network.


275 stations

On 3 April 2002 Jack Welsby set a new record time for 275 stations by traversing the system in 19 hours, 18 minutes and 45 seconds. Welsby made just one attempt, starting his route at Heathrow and finishing at Amersham. This time was beaten on 4 May 2004 by Geoff Marshall and Neil Blake who achieved a new record time of 18 hours 35 minutes and 43 seconds. Their attempt began on the first train out of
Amersham Amersham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills, northwest of central London, south-east of Aylesbury and north-east of High Wycombe. Amersham is part of the London commuter belt. There ar ...
on the Metropolitan Line and ended at Upminster, and it took ''Guinness World Records'' four months to ratify it. A previous attempt had been broadcast on TV as part of '' The Tube'' TV series and another attempt had been televised as part of an ITV1 programme ''Metroland: Race Around the Underground'' on 16 October 2003. Although this time stood for two years before being beaten by just five seconds by Samantha Cawley and Steve Wilson on 30 May 2006, it was not until Håkan Wolgé and Lars Andersson (both from Sweden) set a new record time for 275 stations that it appeared in the ''Guinness World Records'' book again, in the 2008 edition. They set a new record of 18 hours, 25 minutes and 3 seconds, on 26 September 2006.


270 stations

In 2007, the closure of the East London Line (incorporated into
London Overground London Overground (also known simply as the Overground) is a Urban rail in the United Kingdom, suburban rail network serving London and its environs. Established in 2007 to take over Silverlink Metro routes, it now serves a large part of Greate ...
) removed seven stations from the Underground network, while Wood Lane and
Heathrow Terminal 5 Heathrow Terminal 5 is an airport terminal at Heathrow Airport, the main airport serving London. Opened in 2008, the main building in the complex is the largest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom. Until 2012, the terminal was used ...
both opened in 2008, resulting in the record being 'reset' several times in quick succession before the network settled on 270 stations for the following 13 years. Subsequent holders of the 270-station record were Andi James and Steven Karahan, who set a time of 17 hours, 12 minutes and 43 seconds on 24 July 2008. On 14 December 2009, James set another record with Martin Hazel and Steve Wilson, achieving a time of 16 hours, 44 minutes and 16 seconds. TfL used this route four years later as part of the Art on the Underground
labyrinth In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth () is an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the h ...
project to mark the 150th anniversary of the
London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...
, installing permanent designs at stations in the same order that the world record route had taken, and later appeared in an ''Information Capital'' article. The three became the first people to have held records for both the London Underground and the
New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system in New York City serving the New York City boroughs, boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. It is owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Tr ...
when they beat the New York Subway Challenge record in November 2013. The record remained unbeaten for 17 months, until Marc Gawley from Denton, Greater Manchester, set a new time of 16 hours, 29 minutes and 57 seconds on 21 April 2011. As a fast marathon runner, he revealed that he did not use any buses on the day, preferring instead to make all his connections on foot. Gawley's record was beaten 37 days later, when James and Wilson completed the challenge in just 44 seconds under Gawley's time, setting a new record of 16 hours, 29 minutes and 13 seconds on 27 May 2011. This record stood for over two years until August 2013, before being broken by previous record holder Geoff Marshall who along with Anthony Smith, completed the challenge in 16 hours, 20 minutes and 27 seconds, the record time was then published for the first time in seven years in the ''Guinness World Records'' in the 2015 edition. Clive Burgess and Ronan McDonald set a new Guinness world record time of 16 hours, 14 minutes and 10 seconds on 21 February 2015. The record was broken later that year, on 21 May, by previous record holders Andi James and Steve Wilson, in a time of 15 hours, 45 minutes 38 seconds.


272 stations

The total number of stations rose to 272 after the opening of
Nine Elms Nine Elms is an area of south-west London, England, within the London Borough of Wandsworth, with some parts (including the Nine Elms tube station, tube station) extending into the neighbouring London Borough of Lambeth. It lies on the River Thame ...
and Battersea Power Station on the Northern line extension to Battersea. Adham Fisher set a new Guinness World Record time of 20 hours, 4 minutes and 10 seconds on 4 October 2021. Arthur Philipps, Ruairí O'Grady, John Mawdsley, Alex Rennie, Tim Livant, Joseph Solomon, Alex Sinclair, and Yipeng Xu set a new Guinness World Record time of 18 hours, 8 minutes, and 13 seconds on 23 October 2023. A new record was set on 10 August 2024 when Robin Otter and Thomas Sheat visited the 272 stations in 17 hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds.


Other attempts

Attempts to travel the network have been linked to charities such as Children in Need and Comic Relief. A charity attempt known as "Tube Relief" was organised, following the
7 July 2005 London bombings The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters travelling on Transport in London, London's public transport during the ...
, to raise money for the London Bombings Relief Charitable Fund. Fifty-one people rode the entire tube network for the day, raising over £10,000 towards the official charity fund. A Sue Ryder charity event took place in November 2011, when ten teams competed against each other to have their photo taken outside as many of the 270 stations as possible. Former record holder Geoff Marshall subsequently organised a mass-participant events in 2014, 2015 and 2016, called "Walk The Tube", raising tens of thousands of pounds in the process.


See also

*
Travelling salesman problem In the Computational complexity theory, theory of computational complexity, the travelling salesman problem (TSP) asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible ...


References

{{Reflist, 30em


External links


BBC video of a 2013 attemptFormer record holder Mark Gawley's Tube Challenge website
London Underground World records