health & safety
One steamy hot summer I had the misfortune to be on an "intercity" train from the west country in a London direction. The miracles of engineering are designed to whisk you from city to city at speeds in excess of 125mph...

So I was understandably miffed that I was sat on a packed train with broken air conditioning sweating like an Austrian parent when the buildings inspector calls round. Where the train had now been stood still for nearly 1 and 1/2 hours.

This "parked" train was of course British rails solution to the faulty train we had begun our journey on and after that broke down we were hearded not onto our current train but an identical one which in turn broke down just 30 mins later and we were now sat on our 3rd train!!!

You would be forgiven for thinking that this train too had broken down but no, due to our swapping of trains over and over we had created something of a "train jam" and were now waiting for the line to be cleared of broken down trains which blocked our way!

Feeling a more than weary and with a thirst to rival an Ethiopian villager I sought out the cafe/shop. When I got there it was like the day after a war was declared and the shelves were bare save for some manky looking salted peanuts and some tea bags... just the bags, no milk or water.

It turns out in their eagerness to move us passengers from train to train they had neglected to bring any of the food and drink from the other trains and simply arrived with the depleted stocks on this train which had just completed another journey before being sent to collect us.

So I was hot, bored, dehydrated and hungry. Luckily the train was stopped in an actual train station... on the platform I could see one of those "Lemon tree" cafe's!!! All manner of cakey things and drinks! They taunted me, their colourful sticky hues blurred in the grimey train windows.

There was just one problem.... all the windows are sealed on the train.... the doors are all locked.... Neither can I get out to go to the cafe nor call and beg the shop staff to bring something over and post it through some open gap on the train.

I hunted down the "train manager" (WTF is that, surely he's the conductor?) and suggested that since we had gone nowhere and clearly were not going to for a while AND everybody was hungry/thirsty it might be a good idea to open the doors so we can use the cafe?

"No, can't do that sir".

"Why not?"

"This station isn't a scheduled stop on this service".

"???? WTF?!?"

"The train isn't scheduled to call at this station, so we can't open the doors in case passengers got off at the wrong station."

"Not scheduled??? You're right! According to the schedule we're 7 hours into a 3 hour journey!"

We argued until I gave up and solemly went back to my seat.

It seems that British rail won't risk you not realising that some pikey small station isn't London Waterloo.... but they will let you die from dehydration.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Thu 29 May 2008, 17:33, Reply)