QUick replies and stupid passengers...

I've got this episode on CD - the BBC have released several "best of" CDs of the show, and the episode with 3.17 to Cleethorpes is on one. The joke must have been old even then, as the full quote goes:

Customer: I want a return ticket
Ticket seller: Where to?
Customer: Back here, of course.
Ticket seller: Congratulations, sir, you're the one millionth passenger to have cracked that joke, you can have the ticket free.

 

One thats happened many times. On western locos the pipework from the hydrostatic lubricators go's round in a circular pattern on the cab roof.

Visitor asks: is that the heater???

Errrr...

 

It is approximately 2320hrs on Saturday, 5th July, 2008. 1940s weekend. The return evening special has just arrived at Bewdley, bound for Bridgnorth and the guard is passing through the 10-coach train, encouraging passengers to move forward to the first three coaches as they will be stopping in the shorter platforms of the intermediate stations. A small group of anxious passengers asks:

SGOAP: What station is this?

G: Bewdley.

SGOAP:When does it get to Kidderminster?

G: We've just left Kidderminster.

SGOAP: When does it go back?

G: Tomorrow. Er, why are you on this train?

SGOAP: We were just sitting on it, out of the rain, watching the band. We didn't think it was a real train.

G: (Temporarily bereft of speech)

 

That confirms the rumour that I heard on sunday jtx!

 

Or, he could have said, "Ok, police it is, or is your reputation more important?"

 

I was on the ordinary MK1 travelling a couple of years ago and I overheard this family,

father was pointing out all these railway bits and bobs to his two boys

then he told them these carriages where built a few years before ww2 #-o

 

"Excuse me, how long's the next train?"

"About 300 feet or so Sir..."

 

Yes someone told me they'd said that to a passenger the other day. I did think the little child who asked me what loco it was the other day was sweet, he asked if it was Thomas and I came up with the line "No this is Jinty, Thomas's Cousin!"

 

Heard a report form a fellow SVR guard about a lady showing her young son the comunication chord on a train, saying, "In the olden days, when these still worked if you needed to stop the train in an emergengy, you pulled them like this," gives thwe chord a tug, "Of course they don't work now."
Of course, the inevitable happened, the brake came in, and the train ground to a stop.

 

Passenger:...excuse me where this train going to?

Me: Swanage sir.

Passenger: Is that why the railway is called the Swanage Railway?

Me: No not really....

 

pass:does the next train go to rawtenstall
staff:no it goes to manchester
pass: was left on the platform at bury having not got on the train due to the member of staff saying this.

note this is in the presivation era not br days.

josh

 

After a Rheidol train had got to Devils Bridge this chinese bloke came up to the engine in his suit and breifcase and asks 'can you give me directions to Moor St please' believing he had just pulled in to New St! So we told him!

 

Gricer- excuse me can you tell me the significane of the orange oil can please?
Fireman (me)- well todays driver has a problem with his eyes and its easier for him to see an orange one if he puts it down in the shed!
Gricer quite content wrote it in his pad and then got in the train! Cue giggling from the driver who disapeared quite quickley to the other side of the engine at the start of the convo

 

The question I get asked all time is -- where does the coal go ? even those I give a cab tour to still insist the coal goes in the big hole
- it doesn't this an oil burner !

 

Apparently, there is a notice in the South West Trains booking office at Alton giving the following directions which gets used every couple of months or so:

- Catch the next train to London Waterloo.
- Northern Line to Euston.
- Next Manchester-bound train as far as Stoke-on-Trent.
- Connecting bus service to Alton Towers.

On that note, I wonder, when Stratford International station opens, how many foreign visitors are going to ask for directions to Shakespeare's birthplace.

Not railway related, but when I was at school, some fellow pupils were studying the works of Thomas Hardy and a teacher took them on a trip to visit the Hardy Monument in Dorset, which is a memorial to Vice-Admiral Hardy (as in "Kiss Me Hardy").

 

Friends of mine used to live near Alton and they regularly used to get coach drivers stopping to ask directions to the Towers.
I, on the other hand, used to live in Leeds where, in the station after a train from London had arrived, I was asked on a couple of occasions for directions to the Castle.
The answer was, of course, go out of the station, turn right, keep straight on for 200 miles then ask again!

 

During that critical time, 10 mins before the RA, whilst setting the fire right and keeping her quiet. Two footplate visitors were watching proceedings. One pointing to the PG showing 215, " Is that the temperature ?" "no sir" says I, "that's the steam pressure", " Of cause it is " says the other visitor, " Water boils at 100c " And you can`t raise it any higher than that" I wish I had known that, I would not have worked so hard trying to defy physics !!!!!!

 

Just read this on the Evening news website (link off wikipedia)

someone better tell the M&GN society about this lol #-o

 

Often asked question at Swanage "Where does your coal come from?"

occasional answer "Off the back of a lorry" or even "off the conveyor belt"

 

I know it was wrong to sit there chuckling to myself, but to listen to a guy at the Bluebell line explaining that the branch at Horsted Keynes extended all the way to Crawley (!), and how they don't use it because they haven't got enough locos, really made me laugh!