Travelling the ironic horse
A trip on the Leighton Buzzard narrow gauge railway. We’d seen the engine sheds with ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ lookalikes and climbed onboard early for good seats for Little H and my daughter. I pushed her wheelchair to a lovely compartment just perfect for us four. Returning her wheelchair to the car, I joined them waiting for departure. The rest of the train was filling up fast.
Minutes before leaving, the guard asked us to move. “This compartment is for wheelchairs.”
“Just how disabled do you have to be?” I asked glumly as we really struggled to find alternative seats.
- Category: True Stories Told As Fiction
5 comments add one below
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Neville Hunt over 5 years ago
A tue story. As it happened though, the needs of the person and carers who subsequently occupied our earlier ‘perfect’ compartment were greater than ours and did involve a wheelchair. Nonetheless, it had been difficult for us to find and help my daughter to the few alternative seats and had seemed completely ironic.
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Neville Hunt over 5 years ago
And it was good fun...
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Neville Hunt over 5 years ago
Thanks Drew. We were actually all laughing about the irony, so I reckoned it had to be drabbled. Our reward for getting there early was to squeeze in where we could among others. It’s a good activity to while away a couple of hours and the engine shed museum was interesting for me too. I stumbled upon the title while I was saying how ironic it was. The guard was a slightly slimmer version of the Fat Controller. He certainly controlled us... and not in a good way. And for once it wasn’t my fault 😊
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Peter Henderson over 5 years ago
A good story, thanks Nevile, I hope any interest in the rest of the site balanced out the poor service on the train.
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Neville Hunt over 5 years ago
Thanks Peter. It was a really good trip and is run by enthusiastic old chaps on a purely voluntary basis. Every time it needs to cross a road, the guard gets out and walks up to stop the traffic. Really fun for everyone! The person whose wheelchair ‘stole’ our compartment was in far greater need than my daughter and so we had no real problem with our eviction, just that it would have been nice to have known earlier so we could get decent seats. 🚂
