Train journeys are only bearable when cnuted...
... but getting the last train from Londinium to Exeter of an evening can turn a lovely drunken sleep-filled commute into a half dazed nightmare should you wake up in Plymouth or Penzance (I've done both once). Hence, as the train I was sitting on terminated in Exeter I knocked back a few tins of gin, showed my ticket to the man and happily passed out into my Chuck Palahnuik safe in the knowledge I'd not overshoot into another country. When I awoke the train had stopped in Exeter, only it had stopped quite a few hours before. Everyone had alighted, the inspector had done a check through the carriages, the driver had pulled into the sidings, they'd switched off all the lights, locked up and gone home.
Half dazed nightmare doesn't cover it. Half-cut shit-the-bed scream-fest would be more appropriate.
The swishy doors in between the carriages don't switch off so, should you be stumbling back and forth in a panic, it's a bit like being in a shit episode of Star Trek. Upon calling 999 I didn't really know which service to ask for ('Ummm, I'm locked on a train'). The police told me they'd contact the controller to try and help me. I cleared the fact that I was going to have some fags and wouldn't get fined. 15 minutes later the controller was on the phone telling me to make my way towards the front of the train - which is very apparent in the pitch fucking dark. Once I was located and helped off (Christ they're high when you're not at a platform) I say rather sheepishly to my saviour
'I bet this happens all the time'.
He looks at me wiheringly and says 'No'.

So I recommend drinking cooking lager and not spirits for long trips, should you not wish to experience half an hour of completely random terror.
(garetha, Sat 16 Feb 2013, 10:49, 6 replies)

Agree

(groover j lazerus, Sat 16 Feb 2013, 14:36, closed)

Last time I woke up in Penzance, I had a tenner, and there was one more train heading east that night.
Winner I thought. A quick pint, and then on the train home. What actually happened was I had the tenner scammed from me by a junkie which also caused me to miss the train, and I had to spend the night sleeping on the platform in winter. I fucking hate Penzance.

As an aside, as I was slowly freezing to death on the platform, I couldn't decide whether a pipe would make me feel colder or warmer. I pulled my pipe out, and noticed the gauze was missing, so the choice had been made for me. Then I looked down, and there was a shiny new gauze sitting next to me on the platform. Strange. The pipe made me feel warmer.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sat 16 Feb 2013, 16:12, closed)

I hope you repost the story where you try to have sex with your mum this week.
That must be the kind of horror you can't relive enough times.
( Pig Bodine., Mon 18 Feb 2013, 9:26, closed)

I once woke up on a tube in the sidings at Amersham (end of the Met line)
but you can jump out onto the tracks between the carriages on a tube train so my story is fucking shit and I'm going to kill myself and it's pretty much all your fault.
(woocfot friends with Sacha Distel, Sat 16 Feb 2013, 22:29, closed)

Hold on, my brother woke up on a train at the end of the line once too
but the inspector woke him up and let him off so his story is shit as well jesus christ are you trying to kill my entire family.
(woocfot friends with Sacha Distel, Sat 16 Feb 2013, 22:32, closed)

The Controller?
Was it the Fat Controller?
(Bob the Builder killed Captain Alex, Sun 17 Feb 2013, 7:14, closed)