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Anorak News | Off The Rails

Off The Rails

by | 26th, August 2004

‘TOO often when we let the train take the strain, it pulls a muscle and lies prostrate on the track for hours until paramedics with hammers and drills arrive to kick it back into action.

A new invention – it’s called a bus

We at Anorak have always considered this to be less a matter of failures in train design, planning and investment and more a matter of branding.

Try not to think of the train as means of getting from A to B, rather consider it as moving toilet with picture windows.

But the Times says that a new improved mobile lav is on the way, and this one’s able to get stuck on the roads.

Make way for the Blade Runner, which has retractable steel wheels between rubber tyres, so allowing it to ride on road and rail at the flick of a button.

Part-funded by the Department Of Trade And Industry and being built by a Yorkshire engineering firm in conjunction with Lancaster and Northumbria universities, the new vehicle will open up underused branch lines.

The Times says that over 60 branch lines are unpopular with passengers because they are punctuated by stations that are too far from desired destinations.

This new hybrid vehicle will be able to pick up passengers from villages and then drive them on the rail track towards the main train line or town centre.

And as long as the conditions remain favourable, it sounds like a sure-fire hit.

Until it gets stuck on drowned roads in the summer, slips on leaves in the autumn, skids on ice in the winter and runs over new-born lambs in the spring…’



Posted: 26th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink