Crystal Palace station, earlier this evening.

Due to late running caused by earlier operating difficulties, what
should've been the 18:02 to West Croydon was instead terminated at
Crystal Palace in order to form the 18:28 to Victoria.

Bad enough already, I'm sure you'll agree. But then...

Just as the customers for Victoria were about to board the train, an
announcement came over the station PA saying the service had been
cancelled "due to a fault on the train that cannot be rectified." (At
least I think that's what it said, the announcer was whispering, so it
was very hard to hear anything.) But no-one had bothered to tell the
driver that he had a faulty train, since he then announced over the
train PA that this was the 18:28 service to Victoria, calling at all
stations.

The station PA repeated its quietly whispered announcement that the
18:28 was cancelled, and that customers were not to board the train at
platform. The dot-matrix display eventually updated itself to agree.
The driver obviously hadn't heard or seen any of this, since he once
again announced over the train PA system that this was the service to
Victoria.

By now, everyone on the platform had no idea what was going on. The
train eventually left, heading towards Victoria, with only two
passengers on it. The rest of us had decided to wait for a train that
knew where it was supposed to be going. I've no idea whether it did
make it there, or if it's now lost in the Twilight Zone somewhere!

--
___ _ ___ _
/ __| ___ | | __ _ _ _ | _ \ ___ _ _ __ _ _ _ (_) _ _
\__ \/ _ \| |/ _` || '_| | _// -_)| ' \ / _` || || || || ' \
|___/\___/|_|\__,_||_| |_| \___||_||_|\__, | \_,_||_||_||_|
|___/
http://www.freewebs.com/solar_penguin/

** I know, but he's faulty, malfunctioning; kept babbling on about his
origins with less than 45 seconds.

** A brilliant stroke has plunged literally into the lead! Oh it's
outrageous.

And the moral of the story is... Before you go after the blood of some
poor station staff, remember that they can only pass on the information
that someone up above has thought to hand to them to give out!

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:13:23 +0100, "solar penguin"
wrote:

Just as the customers for Victoria were about to board the train, an
announcement came over the station PA saying the service had been
cancelled "due to a fault on the train that cannot be rectified." (At
least I think that's what it said, the announcer was whispering, so it
was very hard to hear anything.) But no-one had bothered to tell the
driver that he had a faulty train, since he then announced over the
train PA that this was the 18:28 service to Victoria, calling at all
stations.

The station PA repeated its quietly whispered announcement that the
18:28 was cancelled, and that customers were not to board the train at
platform. The dot-matrix display eventually updated itself to agree.
The driver obviously hadn't heard or seen any of this, since he once
again announced over the train PA system that this was the service to
Victoria.

By now, everyone on the platform had no idea what was going on. The
train eventually left, heading towards Victoria, with only two
passengers on it. The rest of us had decided to wait for a train that
knew where it was supposed to be going. I've no idea whether it did
make it there, or if it's now lost in the Twilight Zone somewhere!

In that situation I would have believed the driver!

--
Peter Lawrence