[Jokes4u] Virgin trains

[Stephen Bailey]

'Does anyone have nuts or bolts to fix this train?'
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If the Tannoy announcement had asked for a doctor to make themselves known
on a London to Manchester train last Friday (Oct 27), passengers would
probably not have been too startled.

But when Virgin Trains' leaning train pulled into Rugby station, the last
thing the travellers were expecting was an appeal for help to get the
locomotive going again.

After several minutes sitting silently at the station, a sheepish member of
staff broke the silence with the announcement: "If anyone has some nuts and
bolts with them will they come forward?"

The super-fast Pendolino had ground to a halt because the blades on the
windscreen wipers had come loose and it could not pull away until they had
been fixed.

Willing passengers gathered together a rudimentary tool kit and one even
clambered on to the front of the engine in an attempt to get it running
again, but to no avail.

Hundreds of passengers on the 16.35 London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly
service had to be moved to another train following behind.

"We didn't know what had happened except that something was obviously wrong.
The first scheduled stop was Stoke-on-Trent but we ended up at Rugby," said
Damian Gaskin, a company director who was travelling home to Manchester with
his two nephews after spending a day in the capital.

"The announcer came on the Tannoy and asked if anyone had any nuts and bolts
to come to the front of the train.

"There was astonishment and mild surprise to say the least. Everybody just
looked at each other. It was so unbelievable it was funny. I travel a lot
and have heard some excuses in my time but I have never heard of passengers
being asked for tools to help fix the train before.

"She was so sincere and so apologetic you couldn't hold it against her.

"For want of a nut the windscreen wiper won't work, and for want of a
windscreen wiper the train can't move. And, if the train can't move there
are going to be loads of trains behind us that can't move either."

Mr Gaskin, 37, from Didsbury, Manchester, found some plastic cable ties and
a tube of superglue in his briefcase and another passenger, who happened to
be a former Network Rail engineer, volunteered to climb on to the front of
the engine and fix the blade.

"He had one foot on the platform and another on the front of the train and
was trying his hardest to mend the windscreen wiper," said Mr Gaskin.

"I thought he was a Virgin employee until I asked him what his job was. He
told me he had helped reboot the electrics on another train the week
before."

Despite Mr Gaskin's offerings and the valiant efforts of the unnamed former
engineer, they were unable to fix the train and after a delay of about an
hour some 500 passengers squeezed into the next train to Manchester.

Lee West, a spokesman for Virgin Trains, said: "It was a strange request but
we wanted to keep the train running. It was raining and the driver couldn't
have pulled off without the wipers working.

"If we could have done a temporary repair job to get it to the next station
an engineer would have fixed it properly."