Rail transport

An old(ish) train (class 31)

“In Soviet Russia, Railway privatizes YOU!!”

~ Russian reversal on Railways

Railways, long believed by many people to have been invented by the Romans in the year 3, has since been found to be not true, as claimed by modern historians. They were invented in 1804 by some bloke called Richard whose last name no one can pronounce, and as a matter of fact, who no-one cares about either, hence the claim being given to George Stevenson, who only built his loco 'Rocket', to escape out of Northern England faster than anyone had ever before.

Early History

The first trains were pulled by horses, with excuses such as "We apologise for the delay, the engine has just stopped to go to the toilet" being common. From the beginning trains were delayed, although leaves on the line were not a problem as the horse would just eat them. The trains were considerably more comfortable, if you could afford First Class. Second Class was bearable, and Third Class was basically a coal truck. If you were lucky, they took the coal out first. If you bought a Third Class ticket and found yourself sitting in a wagon that had last been used to carry potatoes, the Guard would charge you extra for sitting in the Buffet Car.

They also went more than two hours without a software failure. Early trains ran on MS-DOS.

British Rail

In between the Ancient Era and Modern Times, most trains were run by British Railways (British Rail, Brit Rail, or if you are very impatient and stupid, National Rail). British Rail was represented by a double arrow symbol, which represents their trains' unfortunate habit to go both ways at once (see Thomas the Tank Engine). Most trains 50 years ago were steam powered, but now, most are powered by diesel engines, so pollution is now 400% worse (see clag). There are three types of carriages made by BR, Mark 1, Mark 2, Mark 3, and Mark 4. Mark 4 are air-conditioned, but about the size of a sardine can. Mark 1-3 are larger, but the doors are not automatic, so passengers have to open them themselves and risk losing their arm in the process (see capital punishment and SEHS). Trains on British Rail used to by operated by TOPS system, which meant that all train drivers had to have tops on, but now are operated by Windows Vista, hence the crappy service now.

Modern History

One day, Margaret Thatcher looked out her window, and saw a beautiful, prosperous nation. "How can I ruin this wonderful place?" she thought to her self. So, she murdered British Rail with a blunt axe. The Tories cheered the whole time, and the Liberals cried, but still did nothing.

Modern passenger trains are more like the cattle trucks of the early railways, with one notable exception. Carriers of livestock have restrictions on how many animals can be carried per vehicle. Passenger train operators have no such restriction. In Japan they employ people to stand at stations and stuff passengers in so they can shut the doors, but in India they just expect you to sit on the roof. In Britain, they expect you to miss your train.

Modern trains are hot, stuffy, and filled with British people, even in Brazil. Most trains have the windows welded shut, but some have no windows at all. Of the ones that have windows, they use either Vista (newly built stock) or 3.1 (inherited BR stock). This is less efficient than MS DOS, but it means the Guard can use ALT-TAB to move between carriages.

Third Class doesn't exist any more in our politically correct society. In a move by today's modern-minded management consultants, Second Class was abolished and Third Class was renamed Standard Class.

Standard Class is normally dirty and full of Chavs. The seats are either plastic, or wooden planks. First class is better: The seats are still wooden planks but they are covered in plastic bags. Only the rich Chavs are there, and they already have enough bling to sink the Bismark, so don't feel threatened by them.

Somewhat Modern Railway Companies

• Arriva Trains Wales — A large Company who know a bargain when they see one, which is why they bought Scotrail's Sprinter trains with special sweat-soaked seats. Widely rumoured to have a phobia of Birmingham New Street - leading to terminating every train early at Wolverhampton.

• Connexxxx — Runs about $e^{x}$% of the world's rail network, without realizing it. Because of this, they neglect Melbourne's rail system. Therefore, most of Melbourne now resembles Berlin, 1945, except at least in Berlin, you could count on the Soviets for a bit of fun.

Connex operated high speed trains. Here you see the fastest train, with a top speed of 15 km/h.

Suburban Operations

• Cross Country Trains Are a new company who took over Virgin's Cross Country routes in November. They have not yet got the hang of attaching their corporate name to the front of an otherwise sensible name for a train company. (Their motto could be "Arriba Arriba!") This is proboably because Arriva know they are crap, and don't want others to know. Passengers were pleased to realise that the legendary 'cattle class' introduced by Virgin has been retained by Cross Country.

• East Midlands Trains Took over Midland Mainline and Central Trains. Often use an assorted bag of splinter trains on Liverpool-Norwich services. This means problems develop between West-siders and East-siders and riots are common. They use special iPods to control their trains. Operate clones of the Vomiter trains- help!

A Central Trains/London Midland iPod

• First Capitalist Connect — Also known as "Fucking Cheating Cunts Who Came to Being by Bribing Some People Somewhere and Telling Us They Would Give Us What We Wanted and Not What We Thought We Wanted". So they introduced restrictions which meant you had to come back home before you had even left and put pink everywhere beacuase thats what "we" wanted!

in the eyes of a dazed Puffin, a First Scotrail train looks like a fellow Puffin

• First Scotrail — Never on time, because the train can't leave until it is bang on the departure time, and by the time the train has powered up it is no longer the departure time and the train is late. Excluding, of course, Intermediate stations, where the train has already left before the arrival time. There is railway line to North Berwick, a place where bird spotters go to see rare birds, on an island half a mile offshore. The birds are often scared by the flashes from the birdspotters' cameras and flee to the railway station (where the Puffins think the trains are other Puffins).

• First Transpennine Express — A shit company who don't know what a fucking train is. They know what a skirt is, though, and they expect all their male employees to dress in it, hence the name. They serve many Chav towns. Popular with enthusiasts who want to get to places such as Huddersfield. Transpennine drivers blast their Class 185 horns whenever someone waves at them. Shame really. Running over the Chavs might be helpful. Driver training videos can be found here:[1]

• First Late Western; A large Company with awful trains which are not only late but filled with pee and the occasional turd under the chair. First Late Western try to stick to tradition; carriages have no toilets/ventilation systems. To meet government employment standards, there is a fat controller at every station who shouts everyone on the platform, even if their is no platform. Also, the food on the catering trolley (if it comes round) is chewing gum scraped from under the seats. Or rat dung. Take your pick, we live in an advanced society.

• Grand Central Railway — Not Grand. Not particularly central. Not really a railway either, more a shitty train operator that manages to find an extra hour of time between London and the north east that other companies are yet to find.

• Hull Trains — The hellspawn-lovechild of Richard Branson and Madonna.

• Island Line — The only company who ran trains on time, so they were quickly killed and eaten by South West Trains. Such is life.

• London Midland; Central Trains in disguise. (Still) use iPods. Trains run in Birmingham so naturally are full of scum. They have sold their souls to National Express, chopping passengers customers into tiny pieces, which are then used in National Express buses.

• Mersey Rail at Mersey Rail, you board your train at platform 5 at one station and get off on platform 5 at the same station. Inside the trains is nothing. Both these problems are caused by Liverpuddlians nicking everything. The company now specialises in housing hobos, drug dealers and prostitutes. On Friday night you will find many drunkards, left over Burger King meals, and the entire organ makeup of a goat. Not unusual for Liverpool.

• National Express East Coast — took over from GNER in December and still haven't come up with a name more shit than 'One' for the franchise. Because of this, every train leaves exactly at 1.00. Hopefully they will all die.

While people at Birmingham New Street were given a documentary, Virgin Media customers got this instead.

• National ExpressARRRRGGHHH!!!! — Unsafe, late, and won the SRA "Best UK TOC Award", for the those reasons. Also known as First Great Eastern since all the trains still have that paint job.

• Northern Rail — Oldest trains in Britain. That's because the Southerners want to keep the north in the past, where they belong. Serves Cumbria , the North East , Yorkshire and Lanacasheeerre. Wannabe Northerners in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire also benefit from this exquisite service. They think that Leeds is the spiritual and physical centre of the universe. Therefore, Amazingly, ,passengers customers people who give us money travelling from Leeds to elsewhere go from bad to worse. Lancastershire has a massive network that covers every square millimetre. The lucky bastards. The network also serves Liverpool Lime Street, where Scousers ride the trains to Wigan North Western as a daily purgatory, and then return to 'the pewl', to get ridiculously drunk and engage in fights with Mancunians who are still waiting for their delayed trains back to Manc-land.

• South West Trains — This used to carry people around the South of England, but the service in question is now discontinued. Instead, it serves as a freight line, carrying surplus Chavs from London to suitable waste disposal sites such as Woking and Basingrad.

• Virgin Trains (AKA Vermin Trains) — Started by Richard Branson. Offer anyone who is standing a seat in First Class and then charge them extra for it. Also, if you plan to urinate in their toilets, when you flush you may get your urine squirted back at you if you are not careful. This has been a problem ever since Windows Vista was installed on the Voyagers. Also beware of drunk drivers who urinate on the seats and then boast about it! Evil trains. Computerized station signs make rude comments about the passengers customers people who give us money worthless bastards when they aren't looking.

Somewhat Modern Railway Companies Outside of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland

• Amtrak — British Rail's looser American cousin (it has more fun, anyway). Amtrak was created by a stoned Richard Nixon in 1971 (he thought it a nice way to get soldiers out of Vietnam, only to find out it was across the Pacific Ocean from the USA). A total failure (at least at getting soldiers out of Vietnam) from the beginning, Amtrak found new use as an execution method for Democrats terrorists after 1980. Seriously, though, don't make fun of Amtrak. They will kill you, slowly, then laugh at your bloody corpse. And they will stuff you into tin cans with squinty windows.

• Union Pacific Railroad Freight-carrying equivalent to Amtrak. tracing back to the civil war, the Union Pacific RR has overcome issues that would easily cause its collapse, including a divided U.S, the rise of automobiles & interstate trucking(ironic since truck drivers don't know how to drive), A in-favor-of-Eisenhower Interstate Commerce Commission, and an oil shortage in the 70's, although passager service was absorbed into Amtrak(Probably Because UP forgot how to run a passager service). Currently, the Railroad has complete dominance over freight service in the United States, with nobody questioning it. the reason is the fact that UP has ties to the U.S Government, which has made sure that they are always on top. For example, when Burlington Nothern and Santa Fe Railroads merged to create BNSF Railway, The ICC delayed the merger in favor of UP. Once the merger was approved in 1999, UP revoked all of BNSF's trackage rights to their tracks, restricting their service even further. by 2001, BNSF had gone bankrupt. as part of an agreement with Bush 43, UP acquired BNSF, as well as absorbing the ICC, effectively making the UP the josef Stalin of US railroads. Did we mention that Amtrak is a puppet railroad of UP?

Moral of the Story: Never mess with Union Pacific. If you do, they'll find you, then use Amtrak to execute you.

• Bamboo Railways — The Cambodian version of Amtrak. Pol Pot, having killed too many Cambodians, couldn't find anyone to staff the railroads. So he cancelled all service, something the Mexicans would consider a good idea later on. (This is why nobody goes to Mexico those days.) Cambodians, irked at this cancellation, started making their own wheels and axles, and then putting bamboo planks onto those wheels and axles, and finally taking motors from their boats and putting them onto those planks. This proved an immediate success. However, the railroads only had one track, with the result that two planks going in opposite directions led to some decidedly uncomfortable situations. The Cambodians developed a protocol for this: they now honk a toy horn, come to a jerking stop that throws everyone off the planks, then take one of the planks off the rails and lets the other plank through, and hope that everyone remembered exactly which direction they were originally going in. Some people going to Rangoon have wound up in London, for example.

• Shinkansen or Bullet Trains — A fashionable way to throw people or money (and/or both) around a country. Those devices look sexy and/or weird. Just be sure that when you board in Tokyo, you don't wind up in North Korea a half-hour later. There is a sign overhead on many bullet trains (installed by Republicans) that show just how fast the money is being wasted, and another sign (installed by Democrats) showing how fast the energy is being saved. Nobody looks at those signs, anyway.

• Mexican Passenger Service — Mexico privatized its railways a while ago. In order to save money, it abolished coaches and dining cars (and sleeping cars and lounges) from many of its lines. So now many passengers ride on top of oil tankers and boxcars. The food service is rumored to be rather iffy (as if anyone wanted to eat Mexican food anyhow), and some folks take advantage of the railway's free limb amputation service to get rid of unwanted limbs. Most of those passengers try to get to the USA from Central America, but wind up stuck in the middle of nowhere, being killed for food by starving drug gangs. Of course, there is traditional passenger service on one line, the Chepe (a translation of "Cheap", referring to the service), where people are stuffed into motorhomes on flatcars (linked up to each other with rusty articulated-bus accordions). There they ride a train somewhere near a legendary "Copper Canyon", which is never seen but which there are myths and ghost stories about.

Modern trains

Modern trains consist of several types.

• Desastro - Class 450/444 — made from four large tin cans welded together to resemble something that looks slightly like a train. The air conditioning has two settings: "Off" or "Arctic". If you take a packed lunch you will need to defrost it before eating, and your ice-cream will melt, making a nice mess on the carpet and of your already frozen packed lunch. There is, just to add to your frustration, no buffet on these trains - only the trolley which only comes round on days with the letter "z" in them, on months only with the letter x in them.

• Awfulante - Class 180 — parented Vomiters. The beta version of a Vomiter used by Worst Late Western. Air conditioning as per usual on 'modern' rolling stock has the settings burn or chill. Worst Late Western bought them to replace the intershity 125 trains but realised that they were too slow with a top speed of 1 mile in 80 minutes compared to intershity's of 1 mile in 25 minutes. They run on Windows 2000 and the performance reflects this. When Worst Late Western upgraded their intershitys to Windows Vista the Awfulates gave up as they didn't like the competition so Worst Late Western got rid of them all. Hull Trains had the misjudgment to start operating them and other operators are actually planning a fight over who gets them. Currently, the fight is planned to be held under Queensbury rules, and televised by Setanta.

• Vomiters - Class 220/221 — of two types, tilting and non-tilting. The only way to tell is to go round a corner at 100mph. If it comes off the track it was a non-tilting type. The tilting type will stay on but the Driver will slow down so he doesn't spill his tea. The air-conditioning on these trains has two settings. "Off" and "Broken", the advantage of off being that it doesn't blow hot at you. The catering is provided by the ovens in Coach C, it bakes people alive and the back meat is used for Bacon Rolls, making them extremely popular for that something special. The trains soil themselves regularly leading to a weird smell. Some Vomiters are now using a new BioDiesel fuel, making them slightly more eco friendly. These trains are to be used on the London to Wales route, allowing an engineer to refuel the train with rape seed and sewage in Llandudno.

• Pendodildos - Class 390 — these trains are the big brothers of the Vomiters, they can travel at high speeds if their wheels don't crack in the suburbs of Glasgow, these trains have been specially designed, so that when they tilt, the driver does not spill his tea. These trains have two air-conditioning settings. "Freezing" and "Baking".

This train is related to the Vomiters, but apparently, it's a Pendodildo.

• Intershity 225 - Class 91 — the only electric train in Britain that is capable of doing more than 2 miles in 25 minutes, in fact as the name suggests, it does 3 miles in 25 minutes, the seats on these trains are planks of wood, only they are so old, the mould on them is fluffy, still, it's better than a Vomiter.

• Intershity 125 - Class 43 - aka HST — as the name says they are capable of doing 1 mile every 25 minutes, but only downhill, with a following wind, every other Tuesday. These trains were built with Jeremy Paxman Valenta engines, but are slowly being replaced with the new MTU engines, which cannot be heard over the noise of the train standing still at a deserted station in the middle of nowhere. The Valenta powered trains have very mongified followers, called Valenta Veg, or VALEG for short. These trains do have air-conditioning. They just prefer not to use it. However, they have been replaced by Vermin Trains, with the Vomiters. Worst Great Western have started replacing these with an evil clone of a Vomiter, but with not a lot of success - in fact, the evil clone army of these vomiter like trains are to be withdrawn and sent elsewhere in the galaxy - albeit as Stormtroopers. In fact, passengers who saved the sleeper train to Penzance were almost named the "Campaign for the Users of the Night Train Service" - until it was realised the acronym was better suited to their train operator.

• Turdostar - Class 170 — Used many lines across the UK, the air conditioning on these trains is different in every cariage, i.e broken, on, and cold. If you take food with you on train, the chances are that it will survive the first hour onboard the train, after an hour it will need to be thrown into a bin and the owner of the food will have to buy the overpriced stuff sold by the guy with the trolley. These trains also have automated Tannoy systems which will tell you as you arrive at your destination, that the train will call at 17 stations and passenger safety information notices are located at the doors. Example: "Welcome to the First Scotrail service to Inverness. This train will call at: Haymarket, Inverkeithing, Kirkcaldy, Markinch, Perth, Dunkeld and Birnam, Pitlochry, Blair Athol, Dalwhinnie, Newtonmore, Kingussie, Aviemore, Carrbridge and Inverness - Where this train will terminate. Passenger safety information notices are located through out this train. This is Inverness where this train will terminate - please take all your personal belongings with you."

The Splinters are unsuited to the popular country lines and have a tendency to get lost. The train shown above has been trying to find a way out of this forest for several years. The departure boards at the following stations still display "On Time" though.

A typical Sprinter after Worst Late Western's annual maintenance

• Splinter - Class 150/156 and Gaycer - Class 142-144 — used on local branch lines. The Splinter is a railway carriage with a bus engine underneath, whereas the Gaycer cuts out the middle man and is just a bus with the tires taken off and runs on the steel wheels. The less said about the crashworthiness of these pacers, the better. The Stupid Retards Association (SRA - better known as "Several Redundant Accountants") would rather pretend these trains don't exist. Are often used on very popular branch lines which are loved by everyone, adding more to their evilness, as our fare paying public get treated to these Splinters and Gaycers instead of real trains which work. For some reason Pacers are everywhere in the north but none are in London. Train companies have come up with creative excuses as to why they breakdown the latest being "Sarah Palin destroyed the engine with her heat vision". The real reason they breakdown is because they're just shit.

• Steam Trains — no more of these on British Railways, and not really modern, but there we are, except for one(see below). Some groups of Bank Managers, Accountants, Train Spotters and Computer Programmers have formed societies and saved old steam trains from scrap. They run these on closed branch lines and give them either quaint names like the Bloo-bell Railway or grand titles like Gr8t Central Railway. Some of them use place names like the Northampton & Lamport Railway, even though it doesn't go to Lamport and it doesn't stop anywhere near Northampton. Occasionally they let the old steam trains out on the main lines but they tend to be clean, comfortable and run on time, so they send them back before anyone finds out.

• Tornado 60163 - Peppercunt Class A1 — One Day in 1990, A group of idiots decided to build a steam locomotive, even though they should stay off the main line. with 18 years of construction, millions of dollars(or pounds), and idiotic decisions poured into the project, Tornado was completed in 2008, to mixed success. while Tornado was praised by steam societies, the project in it's entirely was panned by Engineers, Railfans, and Environmental Activists alike for it being "a piece of shit". after 2 years, Tornado was scrapped in 2010. End of Story.

Railways and chavs

It is a well documented fact that trains and chavs fit together like Siamese twins. With the arrival of railways to Liverpool and Manchester the chavs from both areas bred like rabbits and as a result they can now be found all over the country. Railways are often used as walking routes by chavs and as such there are always delays as the drivers have to spend time washing the chav entrails from the trains.

In France and Germany, however, they have the right idea. If you were stupid enough to walk into a train and die, it is your fault. Whereas here the chavs are rich enough to warrant being able to sue the railway companies; "Notwork Fail", "Network Fail", "Notwork Rail", "network liar" and "notwork liar"

The simple solution would be to cancel all trains, thus chavs drop like flies. This whole country would become permanently still and unable to move but wouldn't that be better than poor people lurking in our own back yard...or train.

Railways and wildlife

Railways and wildlife (immature giggle), where DO these concepts come from? Many species of animals and birds make their nests and burrows alongside the railways. These can be identified by the different coloured smudges on the front of the train. The London Underground, if you believe what you read in cheap horror novels, is home to six different species of Giant Rats, one of which eats tube train workers for lunch on odd days and passengers on even days.

"I think we found your Sparrow Madam..."

"...and your Buzzard."

Types of railways

A typical railroad track.

In Great Britain there are two types of railway lines. Those that go to London and those that don't. The London lines are usually fast, up to 125mph, many have electric trains, all have Buffet Cars, and a fast and frequent service. Other lines have about three trains a day, which stop at a village every half a mile, and take most of the day to get there.

In India there is no air conditioning on the train and the buffet car only serves curry. As a result most people sit on the roof. This is only a problem if it is an electric train which runs off overhead wires.

In Eygpt, the railways trend to be made from mouse-pads and old-mummies (in pieces) which were found in the landfills of New York. It was made in the year 45 BC just 2 years before the mouse pad was invented. The railway has as many as 5 stations; the Pharaoh's bedroom, the Pharaoh's toilet, the Pharaoh's dining room, the Pharaoh's drug storeroom and the main entrance to the Pharaoh's palace. For many years, the Pharaoh sued the railway for inefficient trains. Many times, because of the trains, he was late for trips to the toilet, his bedtime stories (told by his mother), his before mid-night snack and paying his guards at the main entrance. Other Pharaohs also had those problems so the railways co. decided to add 60 more trains. So for every two seconds, a train came.

Building a railway

There are three main components to building a railway: Asbestos, tea and asbestos. There are many people regreting the accidental building of the railways. Most of the country protested against the opening of Basingrad station, and wanted the railway to go through the town without stopping, as this would also have been a useful way to keep the chav population down as the many chavs using the line as a footpath would have been splatted on the front of a train going 100 m.p.h. Unfortunately the builders of the railway dropped a station in basingrad while passing, which instantly filled with chavs wanting to meet more chavs and breed with them, and so the station could not be removed and we are now stuck with a plague as a result.

Lost Property

If you are stupid enough to leave something on a train, and actually want it back, then contact the railway Lost Property office. They are located in every 7-Eleven shop behind the instant nooldes section. Outside office hours, an answerphone will be in operation, where you will be forced to listen to the story of how somebody once left a wooden leg at Clacton station. There will be a calendar on the trains that indicate the holidays on which the offices are closed on. Holidays include: New year's Day/Eve, Christmas Day/Eve, Budda's birthday, sundays, Pizza day, Sandwich day, donut day, hotdog day, international hopscotch day, Day Day etc. If you happen to have lost something on one of the holidays you can always wait or go look for it yourself.

Please note you will be charged a small fee for the return of your item, which represents approximately double the item's value. Staff reserve the right to rifle through your personal belongings and play Solitaire on your laptop computer until the battery goes flat.

National Rail Enquiries

"Thank you for calling National Rail Enquirings - How can I help you with your travellings today?"

In Great Britain, you can no longer telephone your local station. You have to use National Rail Enquiries. Your call will automatically be redirected to one of the Indian call centres, where it will be answered by someone living on the opposite side of the world who has never heard of the country you are living in, and attempting to travel across. In an accent you can barely understand they will give you details of a five-hour journey with four changes which includes a three-hour wait at Clapham Junction. Fares quoted may vary from those quoted last time you called, even if it was only five minutes ago. In the rare event that you speak to the same person twice, National Rail Enquiries reserves the right to give you completely different information.

Telesales

The Stupid Retards Associtaion (SRA - better known as "Several Redundant Accountants") decided that they needed a way of trying to sell you a standard class (aka third class) ticket for an amount about the size of your house value more easily. Thus telesales was born. You phoned what you thought was your local modern railway company and your call would be instantly answered by a voice message you could barely hear or understand "that your call is important and will be answered within the next ten years". It would then be transferred to India and a man called Bob or a Female called Sally or Jane would say "Welcome to Worst Telesales, Can I take your order please, we have specials on Curry today". You would then be sold a ticket you never asked for and your credit card details would be stolen and inputted into the Mega Windows Vista SP2 database system, to be lost never to see the light of day again. You would then go to the station to pick the tickets up and you would then descover with 2 mins to spare then you've gotten the wrong tickets. The Stupid Retards Associtaion also decided that once Telesales had your money, you wouldn't need to get a refund or change your details and so decided to have 1 person on for refunds, Monday 7am till 7.15am and Thursdays 3am till 3.30am.

The railways and other minority groups

With the arrival of the railways at Brighton the gays went and sought out the chavs, creating a new breed of gay chavs. Most of them went on an "awaygay" day return special to Wales but they all lost their return tickets so stayed. Each one moved to a different place so he could say he was the "only Gay in the village".

There are, of course, railway enthusiasts as well, who take great intererest in the operation and running of railways. These enthusiasts sadly do not see the bad points of railways, and see the delays as a good thing and manage to ignore the screaming and angry passengers, walking up the platform with a smile permanently engraved on their face clutching £1000's worth of recording equipment, only to be met by a mob of angry chavs who invariably will eat them for supper!

Railways and steering wheels

In the Middle Ages 120% of trains had steering wheels. This involved a highly advanced futuristic device fitted on the bottom of trains to lay new rails in realtime as the driver changed direction. Many lawsuits followed, ranging from the "I bought a ticket to ipswich and ended up at lands end" to the "He drove a railway through my house". Due to unpopular demand the steering wheel was scrapped, along with most of the useless rails and the result is the current system where 97.77836% of rails in the world go into London.

Days out with Thomas

A few railways hold these, especially the Mid Hamts railway, see their drivers and firemens favorite page here. Contrary to popular belief, they have nothing to do with Thomas the Tank Engine, but rather an "inspiring" day out to a local place of dis-interest with a man in an anorak.

Notwork Fail

This is a unit of measurement which represents the net amount of work which is carried out on the rail. It reached an all time high over the holiday period 2007-08 when no trains could run due to the net-work on the rail.