Jean, this excuse isn't solely the preserve of the British railway system - we hear it out here quite often. When it rains, the signalling systems malfunction...haven't heard the one about leaves on the line.
However, there is a beautiful new train in Sydney(was to have been called the Olympic train, but they weren't ready in time, so now its called the Millenium Train). These supposedly state-of-the-art trains cause havoc whenever they go out onto the tracks - first of all they kept jamming the signals behind them so that no other train could follow it, and the whole metropolitan system was coming to a standstill. They were withdrawn, and overhauled. There was a list of over a *hundred* faults in this train alone, and eventually it was agreed each train would have to be tested, with a special engineer on board for 100 hours before the government would accept delivery. The idea is that the engineer would be able to get the train running again if it broke down, thus avoiding disruption to the whole system. Only this afternoon, a Millenium train, with engineer on board broke down, at a vital spot on the railway system (no way round it). The train coming behind tried to push it out of the station and up the line to where there is a bypass line. No luck! This time its the brakes jammed on, and it took the engineer, and whatever reserves he was able to call up, nearly 2 hours to get it moving again....which of course meant that all the peakhour train traffic was running late. Ruth Budge (Sydney, Australia) Jean Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Our railway system is never short of an excuse as to why services are disrupted. The usual excuses are leaves on the line in autumn, the wrong kind of snow in winter, landslides, and flooding. Yesterday trains were restricted to 60 mph instead of their usual 120 mph because of the exceptionally hot weather making it possible that the railway lines will buckle. They're likely to be restricted for the next few days. We're having almost record temperatures - it's in the low 30's centigrade - and it might even break the all time record of 1990 (when the temperatiure reached 37.1 C/99 F) tomorrow or Thursday by hitting 37.7 degree C (100 degrees F). Because of the great variations in our weather, the railways can't lay lines to cater for the whole spectrum. I'm surprised that we haven't had heath fires around Poole yet. With this weather and the children on holiday from school, that's usually the recipe for arson on the heaths. Jean in Poole To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://personals.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Personals - New people, new possibilities! Try Yahoo! Personals, FREE for a limited period! To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
