Great Western Coffee Shop

From "The Tower Of London" - one of Stanley Holloway's monologues:

"Here's the axe, here's the genuine axe, sir
Thats given Royal heads some hard whacks
True it's had a new handle and p'raps a new head
But its real old original axe

;)

Probably where the idea for Triggers Broom came from 🤔

Heraclitus, Plutarch and Plato got there much earlier: Ship of Theseus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus).

Mods – given the way this thread has gone would it be a good idea to change the title to “Overcarriying and incorrect journeys” and move it to The Lighter Side?

Reading some of these tales reminds me of incidents when I was at Temple Meads in 1979 working the shifts round as ASM’s clerk.

There was the time when a tearful young woman came into the office with a ticket from New Street to Bicester – presumably somebody misheard what she asked them on the platform or misheard a manual announcement. We got her home via Banbury.

Then there was the occasion a one Saturday morning when the overnight trains to Devon and Cornwall were still running, when four men of Asian extraction and a poor command of English came bleary-eyed to the counter clutching Stockport to Euston tickets. They had clearly go on the wrong train at Stockport, and needed to get to Heathrow by 0730. The ASM explained to them that it was their fault because they got the wrong train, and we had nothing in those days that would get them anywhere near Heathrow by the time they needed to get there.

He suggested they take a taxi, but as a precaution to make sure they weren’t ripped off, he told me to go to the taxi driver’s rest room (now the small cafe on the right at the top of the approach on the Old Station side). Did you know what walking in there at 0500in the morning and saying “Will somebody give me a price for a Heathrow?” does? It would have probably woken ‘em up if rigour mortis had already set in...

Then there was the very aggressive bloke that stormed in one day. “Your bloody train didn’t stop at Bristol Parkway!” he ranted.” It stopped at bloody Chippenham, it stopped at bloody Bath, then went straight through bloody Bristol Parkway without stopping!”

He didn’t seem to be the sort of bloke you would want to put right in those circumstances... I often wondered if he noticed the scenery and station names were different as he went up the hill...



Edited to add - seven hours after I posted this I realised that I put it the wrong thread! Could someone move it to "All Newbury Trains used to stop at Theale" on the Kennet Valley board please?

Looks like a case of thread over carry to me Robin. Hope the moderators give you a free pass back to the correct one, without any "celebrating were we sir?" comments !