If anyone wants a
really absorbing challenge, then an exercise we used to do to improve geography and timetable knowledge for new starters was to see who could work out the shortest possible journey time for a journey which involves changing trains at a station starting with each consecutive letter of the alphabet.
The rules were simple.
1) You started off any time after midnight on the Monday morning from your chosen station starting with 'A' and then went through the alphabet.
2) The list of eligible stations was any station listed in the National Rail Timetable index.
3) You had to change trains at each station and allow the mimimum change time for that station (usually 5 minutes but less or more for a few stations as listed in the timetable) - so you couldn't stay on the same train (unless it happened to have a timetabled dwell at that station above the stated connection time).
4) If travelling through London, you had to allow for transfer time by London Underground as stated in the National Rail Timetable.
5) You could change trains at stations en-route to your next letter where no through service existed as long as it met all the criteria in 2-4 above.
6) You were allowed to disregard the letters 'X' and 'Z' as there are no eligible stations starting with those letters!
So, for example, you could start with 'amiddl's' example and go from
Ascot to
Bagshot on the
06:23 arriving at
06:29, then from
Bagshot to
Camberley on the
06:59 arriving at
07:05, then you could go
Camberley to
Datchet on the
07:17 (changing at Staines) arriving at
08:17 and so on...
Anyone up for the challenge? I'm sure 'bignosemac' will!
Two bits of advice though;
1) The letter 'J' used to be key
2) Don't expect to do it in less than a day!
Click on the map to explore geographics
