"zany" train drivers...C/D?

Are there a few drivers like this?

I remember on the way to good old Forest Gate there would be a funny driver. Also on the tube somewhere or other. He was like "mind the gap now, we wouldn't want anyone hurting themselves would we??"

We had a pilot / captain like that flying down from Glasgow to London earlier this year. He was all like "well, we've made good time but air-traffic control have ruined it now so you can look out the window at London for a while whilst we fly round in circles". He was slagging off the food and also announced "we shall shortly be starting our descent into Glasgow - oh, we've just left there, make that Heathrow". I think he just thought he was funny.

I like the ones who get really arsey when people hold doors open, try to pack on when it's full etc. I always imagine a rubicund Phil Mitchell in the cockpit, fists clenched and a low growl emanating from his lips. Leave it, Phil, it ain't worth it. Slaaaaaags.

The Victoria line is semi-automated anyway; the driver doesn't actually do that much.

semi-antiquated more like

surely speaking on the microphone is the best part of the job! If i were the driver i'd turn off the automated voice and speak at every stop. so a good thing then I'm not working for the tube.

Pilot on my last flight from Vegas had this little number...

"Air traffic control has this slated as a 4-hour 5-minute flight, but we have a pretty good tailwind, so we get there in about 3-hours and 65-minutes...

" close quotes...

that wacky ar$ehole on the viccy line is very very annoying. I take it you mean the one withthe really nasal voice? He wears a lot of badges.

Those aren't badges. They're "flair"

i didn't see his badges, but he did have a nasally cheerful voice.

i was wondering how i would be if i was a train driver. while i'd like to think that i'd be artifically cheerful which would then make me actually cheerful, i suspect that i'd just get all surly and probably end up shouting "what's wrong with you people? are you that stupid that you don't notice that when you stand in front of the doors people can't get out and therefore you can't get in!" and things like that.

guess it's for the best that i don't drive a train.

I would love to drive a tube train. I really was. Last night in the Horse Hospital they were showing training videos or something of the Picadilly Line and I was utterly entranced. Where can I get one? Or rather, can I *BE* one? They always have ads to be a bus driver, but I'd make an awful bus driver. But I think I'd make a great train driver.

jah wobble to thread!

B-b-but you can kate!

Go here and download the relevant bits. Sadly, when i played it, i couldn't understand and kept driving through stations. But they were only on the High Barnet branch, so fuck the passengers. Shouldn't live so far out should they.

Cheerfully nasal voice = it is Ken Livingstone moonlighting in order to drum up excitement for tourists.

didn't I see some art at the whitechapel a bit back that was a drivers eye view of the entire circle line?

Yeah Chris - can't remember who, but Hopkins will know; I went with him. The actual piece was called Circle to infinity or something like that.

Kate - this is the best link.

that's the feller, the same exhibition had a really cool video of people walking out of an arrivals lounge of an airport set to monastic chanting, it was like a long scene from a gangster film but no-one got killed.

Sounds like Mark Wallinger.

I thought that when I was there but I'm not sure it was istr saying that it should have been him. There was a mirrored tardis type thing too that disappeared if you stood in the right part of the room.

That's him. The piece in the Airport was called something like 'Entrance to Paradise'. I liked that piece too.

HSA keeps going on about the Tardis thing, he loved it. ;-)

zany train drivers are classic.

i had one on the purple line in chicago a few years back, he made riding a pleasure by using an overly formal way of speaking and announcing all the restaurants near to each stop etc. then they replaced him with those automated announcement things and i was sad.

that was possibly the most fun (and in my book therefore best) art show I've ever seen

kate, natasha (do you know natasha? the russian?) works for london underground and sometimes she gets to walk through the tunnels at night! its the coolest thing ever. she wont (cant) (no apostrophes because keyboard is broken) take anyone with her though :(

Aaaahhhh!!! The coolest job, evah! That is so amazing!

Doesn't the underground still have cleaners whose job is to go into the tunnels every night to pick litter? If they don't now, it's only in the past 10 years or so that they've stopped.

Yep. Guess what they find most of down there?

Litter?

Human hair.

urgh, revolting thing: there is a cleaning train that goes around all the tube tunnels and cleans the air as it does it (i dont really know how it works, i sort of imagine it as a sort of massive fuckoff hoover sucking dragon thing on the scale of a train), and that is how they clean the air down there. except the fuckers been broken (for about a year now i think) so the air actually is getting filthier and filthier, its not just our imaginations, and were breathing in all kinds of crap and germs and diseases and dust and pollution and apparently fuckloads of iron filings to boot.

i wish i could walk to work, or at least bus...

Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! I remember reading about this, and this is (partly) why the Central Line has had so many problems recently. And people think I'm paranoid for not wanting to take the Tube. (OK, I'd still drive it. But I'd wear a filtermask or something.)

I remember, when the Chancery Lane derailment happened, lots of the eyewitness reports said the carriages filled with smoke. What actually happened was that the train came off the track and started scraping against the tunnel side; the "smoke" was clouds of dust and crap that it was dislodging.

just found this... mmm, delicious.

During Autumn of 2000, a team of scientists at the Department of Forensics
at University College London removed a row of passenger seats from a Central
Line tube carriage for analysis into cleanliness. Despite London
Underground's claim that the interior of their trains are cleaned on a
regular basis, the scientists made some alarming discoveries.

The analysis was broken down. This is what was found on the surface of the
seats:

• 4 types of hair sample (human, mouse, rat, dog)
• 7 types of insect (mostly fleas, mostly alive)
• vomit originating from at least 9 separate people
• human urine originating from at least 4 separate people
• human excrement
• rodent excrement
• human semen

When the seats were taken apart, they found:
• the remains of 6 mice
• the remains of 2 large rats
• 1 previously unheard of fungus

It is estimated that by holding one of the armrests, you are transferring,
to your body, the natural oils and sweat from as many as 400 different
people.

It is estimated that it is generally healthier to smoke five cigarettes a
day than to travel for one hour a day on the London Underground.

It is far more hygienic to wipe your hand on the inside of a recently
flushed toilet bowl before eating, than to wipe your hand on a London
Underground seat before eating.

It is estimated that, within London, more work sick-days are taken because
of bugs picked up whilst travelling on the London Underground than for any
other reason (including alcohol).

I am about to get on a tube train, thanks.

how long does it take to walk to Walthamstow from Uxbridge?

About 48 minutes. Fancy a fried rat?

That thing above with all the nasty things is a hoax

A few years ago I was on a bus to Cork to see a friend of mine, and as we were coming into Cork the driver said "we'll shortly be arriving in Cork Bus Station, I'd like to thank you all for your co-operation and of course I'd also like to thank you for your.......eh..........em............co-operation".

It was so funny, I felt so sorry for him.

Ha ha, while taking Amtrak up the Coast from LA to San Francisco, the driver emphatically announced "May I remind you please that the smoking of illegal drugs is NOT!!! PROHIBITED!!! on this train!"

::Cue faint stoned cheer from the smoking carriage::

A few minutes later, another, slightly embarrassed and rather more timid announcement "I mean, the smoking of illegal drugs is NOT PERMITTED and PROHIBITED on this train!"

so it is!
doesnt make the underground any less of a stinking cesspit. how many times in public toilets have you seen people just breeze out of the cubicle and straight back into the world without washing their hands? then they hold onto the poles in the trains, then some kids mum holds onto it (and gets the kid to hold onto it too) then they get tissue and get the kid to blow its nose into it thus smearing dirt and filth all over its face and in its mouth, then they feed it a packet of buttons or something... the human race is spectacularly revolting. like that wash your hands ad for health & safety at work, with the blue traces of pestilence all over the kitchen. the thing about the cleaning train is true though, my london underground mate told me.