Triforce! - Triforce! Mailbag Special #31: The Shocking State of Trains

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Triforce Mailbag Special 31! We had a ton of emails from disgruntled train passengers who share their horror stories! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickaxe He's so excited about this. Mail bag. Now you say it like that. It's an impressive one today. Wow, it sounds like you're talking about the testicles. Yes, my mail bag. You sound like an old college professor when you put it that way. Sounds like somebody might be talking about the testicles. The scrotum and the testes all together uh so let me do a couple of catch-up emails and then we'll get on to the main subject of this week's mailbag and i mean 80 of the emails

they had yeah we're about terrible train journeys and just hearing these just hearing these is kind of uh it's a bit like um watching some kind of terrible documentary where you can't look away but you want to know more you know it's like these awful stories coming out where you think oh my god just standing outside the train toilets for the for three hours no it's just like really you can just put yourself in these people's shoes anyway okay i'm high so first of all this is from sean um just a note about the story lewis brought up about the vending machines with cameras uh see attached photo of the error message which tipped people off i'll show you guys this picture in a sec um they weren't being used just for security

they were using ai to build a profile of their customers people were upset that none of this was disclosed anywhere on the machine or by the university we all know how terrible companies are at securing biometric and personal data. The facial recognition camera and video display signage on the front of the vending machine can collect data about the customer's age and gender. Once it's been sent to the control unit, they combine it with other information and try and trigger targeted promotions to stimulate add-on sales. And the way they saw it was on the sort of uh screen there's a an error popped up that says the exception unknown software exception blah blah blah but the app is called inventor dot

vending dot facial recognition app exe so that was the giveaway yeah that's the only reason they found out was because it's because it's that stupid stupid go to like um some other some other places and you see um i know it's supposed to show some sort of immersive 3d experience but there's like monitors on every wall right but but one of them is like broken it's got like the windows error it's like the windows desktop background and you're like okay i guess i guess we know how this works yeah shame yeah i thought that was that's so interesting yeah it wasn't just a security thing and like cctv but it's actually because if you,

I mean, CCTV, you know, obviously we live in the UK and I mean, I live in London, which is the most surveilled city in the world. Oh man, that's crazy. So, and now everybody's got ring doorbells and everything, but equally it's just pictures of like, you know, streets and stuff like that and maybe cash points, but it's not trying to harvest who I am and sell shit to me which feels somehow worse i can't quite put my finger on it why but i don't know yeah this is the other thing we talked a lot of this podcast about being old and getting old and one of the things that has happened one of the things that does happen when you get old is you get scared of all the new shit coming along

this isn't this isn't like how it was you know. And one of the things that I'm obviously scared of is AI and how you could see how quickly it's... Like the AI thing was a big deal, but now I'm seeing like AI movies. I saw this clip this week of this lady who was doing like, like talking to camera or whatever, and they just like dubbed over her, but the AI could change her lips and the way her face moved right her whole everything about like it too and so you could imagine how ai could

just first of all just replace actors with fake version but then second of all just make that into any language like like like put any words in anyone's mouth it's so kind of frightening um the the technology the the way it's going right yeah and it is it is kind of weird like it's not necessarily the fear isn't the robots taking over right it's not like i'm worried about them becoming sentient although that is a thing that i guess might happen i mean it's not why are you saying it like that like out of the side of your mouth like they're listening when you know oh they probably are listening when you move into the future

the fears the reality is different to the sci-fi ideals ideas that you think you know you're hoping it's going to be

this thing and it's actually this thing yeah I think disinformation and that is a big frightening thing right the idea of

for sure of well so I mean I think the main thing is we don't know what these fucking companies are doing they're not going to tell you they're just harvesting all this shit and saving it

what for? maybe it's completely innocent maybe that vending machine when you come up to it it goes hi Lewis would you like another Twix you've eaten 16 Twixes this week that's too many for you you should have a salad

you should have Malt you should have maltesers instead yeah all right this is this is from johnny this is called flies on a plane um the story of maggots falling from the cabin storage on a flight in episode 280 of the podcast uh reminded me of a story from my phd i was studying biomechanics of how flies control their wings and to do that i needed to use a very fancy CT machine. I don't know what that is. To scan their muscles while they were flying. Unfortunately, living in the UK, the most local facility was Switzerland.

So I had to take a flight to Zurich with some live flies in my luggage. I guess they don't have flies in Switzerland. That's why it's so nice there. I spent days researching regulations because I was sure there'd be some law about traveling with live insects on a plane. But all I found was a restriction on traveling with mosquitoes or endangered species. As my flies would just blow flies, there was apparently nothing I needed to do. I couldn't pack them in the hold, as I was worried the low temperatures might kill them,

so I packed my cage of flies into a cabin bag which I would store in the overhead lockers on my flight. When I got to the airport, I was absolutely bricking it. Despite running through this scenario in my head hundreds of times, I had no idea how I would explain to airport security why I had a bunch of flies with me. Arriving at security, my supervisor, who I was traveling with, gave me a nod that said, oh, good luck then. And as I put my fly filled luggage onto the conveyor belt to the x-ray machine, after stepping through the security checks myself, I was ready to see my bag in the queue of suspicious luggage waiting for inspection, but to my utter disbelief it came rolling down the conveyor

belt ready for me to collect no questions asked. Jesus Christ. My supervisor on the other hand got held up, questioned about the mega expensive high speed camera he was traveling with, so I swanned off without him to grab some breakfast. Uh, interesting. I don't think there's any real

concern about traveling with a bag of flies other than if they got loose people might reasonably say Thanks for bringing a bunch of fucking flies on the flight, but yeah, they're not dangerous Well, I think they're annoying If I was the guy working that shift or that time and I saw a big bag of flies come through I'd be like no Just get a go go No, no, you know you're good mate. Thanks, you know, oh this guy's got a cool camera Let's have a look at that.

You'd have a problem. You're the bad guy. You have a problem with flies on a plane. Yeah. What about when I get the tube quite often in London and there's often pigeons on it? You got a problem with that? I don't mind a pigeon

being on the tube. I'm honestly surprised, having seen those Australian border police shows. They don't let a pigeon being on the tube I'm honestly surprised having seen Australian border police shows they don't let through someone's sandwich let alone a fucking bag of forks of flies the reason I've stopped you here is that you've got a sandwich in your bag and we can't have sandwiches

it's exactly like that and they're always like it is just sandwich I get hungry. I don't know if I have sandwich in Australia. We've got sandwiches here in Australia. They're very good. I'm going to have to destroy your sandwich.

Please, it's family heirloom sandwich. When they opened up the sandwich, it was stuffed with cocaine. I don't know about cocaine sandwich. I don't know. It's always that. Oh, man. Fuck me. It's exactly that show.

That's like 20 seasons of that show. It is fully that show. That's why I love it. It's comfort telly. You just bosh it on. You know what you're going to get. Exactly what you're going to get. Exactly what you're going to get. All right.

So this is from Aaron. I'll make it short and to the point. I work at a thrift shop and I also live in Newfoundland, Canada. While taking items to the floor, I did a double take today and immediately thought of Bodega. I'm going to copy paste this for you lads. Okay. One sec.

Someone ripped off Bodega. No'm going to copy paste this for you lads. Okay. One sec. So I've ripped off Bodega. No. How could they? They saw a t-shirt that says wannabe Dildonian. Let it be known it has nothing to do with Bodega as we have a small community with the funny name Dildo. So there is a place called Dildo in Newfoundland and Labrador and they refer to themselves as Dildonians. So there you go. Thank you, Aaron. Good spot.

Very good spot, yeah. Embrace the dildo way. That is good. Do we want to move on to the cavalcade, the veritable cornucopia of bad train stories? Sure.

Yes. So train stories. I want you guys to rate these from zero, which is, that doesn't sound so bad, up to 10. That sounds like a fucking nightmare. And people can I don't know, someone out there can rate these or put them into some kind of table. This is from I'm going to struggle to pronounce this, but I think it's Ev. Could be Ev. This is their name is Ev.

I'm writing as I was listening to your rant about trains. This train, this is, they are writing this email whilst on the train. It's packed like sardines to the point where there is almost no room for maneuverability. My hot take is this. If you're on a train that's packed to the gills, forget about trying to go to the toilet. This especially applies to the middle-aged man who just tried to barrel his way

through the standing passengers to get there on his journey five minutes ago. Either hold it like everyone else or get off at the next station. So Ev was on a train and this guy's barging through them to use the toilet. The thing is, the modern toilets on these trains don't have a mechanical locking door. It's like an electronic lock. You push a button to lock the door.

And a lot of the time it doesn't fucking work. And I've definitely been on trains where the door is open and someone's been sat on it and has been trying to hit the button to close the door again. So don't use the loo. This has happened routinely to me and my friends as well. Look, I sympathize with that poor man. Sometimes you can't hold it. Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes people might have health issues or they might be- It's that busy. I mean, come on. They might have eaten the curry the night before. That's just really, really key to not be in them anymore. Yeah. Um, yeah, I dunno.

Alright, well how about this one? So what, you're taking an explosive shit on the train? Full of people. Better than an explosive shit in your pants. I've lived for 43 years on this planet, and I feel like I've done, like, an okay job, and I gotta say uh i don't think i've ever taken an explosive shit on a train on a plane or in an automobile before your gut bio yeah i've never pooped on a plane once and i've been on many long haul flights

you're a lucky man i don don't want to shit on there. You're a super, superhuman. I think they put something in the air. They pipe in some kind of anti-poop stuff. I think it's the cabin pressure or something. It gets you all backed up because I can't fart either on the plane. Oh, I fart a fair old amount.

I've got tons of stored up farts when I land. Well, I mean, God, I think by the amount of passengers I've sat next to who've farted quite happily to fart, my God, God, I think by the amount of passengers I've sat next to who've farted quite happily to fart, my God, it's- I feel like you can't even smell that much of a chuff on the plane. Not really, no. Every once in a while you would get a wash, but then you just sort of assume that's coming from the bathrooms.

Is that why they- it's the same thing with the food, that's why it's so salty, right, because everything tastes different on the plane. Oh, maybe, yeah. So they have that specific- Also, everything on the plane tastes different on a plane. Oh, maybe, yeah. Also, everything on the plane tastes like shit. Yes, that is it. Yeah. All right.

All right, this is from T. I was listening to this week's podcast about train nightmares. I live in Edinburgh, and last October I had an event to attend in London. Train ticket to London Euston was upwards of £120 with a rail card, so I decided to fly with Ryanairair for 22 pounds i still do that regularly is it still cheaper than the normal about 50 pounds for a train ticket it is mad that it costs so much to use these trains i don't understand why it costs so much more to get the train than it does to get a fucking plane it doesn't make any sense surely a plane is much more expensive

to run all that fuel and shit like that come on oh it's so much worse for the planet as well yeah like comparatively getting a short haul plane is not a good thing i mean even long plane obviously it's very expensive as well but otherwise you'll get a boat i mean god and that's not great that's got a different kind of problem yeah i think yeah the government needs to um the government needs to step in and subsidise the railways. They already subsidise them. They give billions to the trains every year. That's this ridiculous idea that it would cost the government too much money.

We already fucking give them money. We love our trains, though. It's ridiculous. We love our trains. Oh, really? Listen on, young Lulu. Listen on. I worked in London for a while, and this is easily the worst experience I ever had on a train.

I was traveling home from a day at work. It was the hottest day of the year from summer 2022, and the temperature in London hit 40 degrees that day. Yeah, the tube is hot down there anyway. Well, this is traveling home from Waterloo East, so I'm trying to think which line that is. I think that's an overland train. I could be wrong. Apologies, Joe, if I am wrong. Most of the trains have been canceled due to fires on the railway from the heat i remember this after waiting for what felt like forever the train arrived it had cut the

amount of carriages it had from 10 to 4 but it still had the same amount of people trying to leave london at rush hour i managed to get a seat but when i sat down i felt a hot air blowing from the grates on the floor as the heating was on. People were pleading with staff at different stops to try and get the heating off. The train must have been about 50 degrees. I was dripping with sweat just sitting there, and there was definitely far too many people on that train. When I get off, it felt like I had heat stroke, and it was absolutely horrible. Indeed, Joe, I've heard this before.

They leave the heating on. They can't turn it off for whatever reason. So it's like you're on a boiling hot train. There's no windows to open. Everybody's sweating train is packed heat pumping out it's the worst feeling it's so and everyone is fucking miserable it's terrible it's so funny the idea that this is like a mass transit system it's the same thing in india you know where the train's still like it's they don't recommend you as a tourist go anywhere near the trains because they are like a death trap you know like like multiple people die every day on the indian railways you know like just being pushed

on the pressed on the rails or crushed to death in the carriages it's crazy you want to talk about the indian railway lewis is that a is that an email i have an email from connor here if you think the british railway system is bad the ind Indian rail service will make them look like the Japanese in comparison. I am half Irish, half Bengali. And when I was 11, my father took me to India to visit my family. We were supposed to be going on a 10 hour train ride, which is already bad enough as it is, regardless of the aggregating factors. We arrived at the station an hour early and we waited for two hours before asking the station workers where the train was, only to be told it would be another hour. This cycle repeated for about 10 hours without a train in sight, at which point we decided to try and get a hotel, but all the local

spots were booked. In total, we spent 25 hours waiting on the platform. Whoa! Jesus. As an aside, I'm sure you've seen the pictures of Indian trains being overfilled with people hanging off the side and sitting on top. Once actually on the train, one thing that stood out was local guys selling tea, coffee and boiled eggs, walking up and down the train in a constant chant of, Cha coffee, coffee cha, boiled undar, for hours. It being India, with their extreme heat and colourful take on food hygiene, these eggs were probably not the best thing for you.

I had six on this journey and proceeded to become very sick. All in all, very happy to live in a smaller place where I can drive or cycle anywhere I need to. Jesus Christ, man. That's just like playing Russian roulette. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. I mean, I have six boiled eggs. No thanks. I do love a boiled egg, but we can just buy them off some-

For a man walking up and down? A red hot train that's already 10 hours late. Where do you cook these eggs? At home. He's cooked them a bunch of eggs. I think they just cook it in your hand. Do you know what I mean? It's that hot.

You just put a cracking egg in your hand and hold on to it. Yeah, Jesus. Here we go. My most recent train ride from hell. Train back from Sheffield to Leeds. 10 minutes after the train had set off, we stopped. After sitting for 20 minutes, the driver said the intersection we needed to cross was blocked by a freight train that had broken down after another 30 minutes he told us we couldn't even

reverse back to sheffield because there was another train behind us we sat for three hours in total before reversing back to sheffield and because the freight train was still stuck on the tracks no other trains could run to leeds had to get a bus home took ages to make it even worse i only got a four pound refund on a 27 pound ticket chloe that's a shocking story there's a state of these fucking railways it's uh this is is this the is this is this old men yell at trains that the no these are young folks emailing in these are their actual stories this has nothing to do with uh with us yelling at trains this is just this is just people listen to this one from connor it thinks they've had the worst experience on a train short of a

major incident such as derailment it's around christmas catching a train from king's cross to darlington to visit family typically around that time of year the trains are slammed with people even if you had a seat reservation you'd be lucky to be able to get to your seat so i'm stood in between the carriage crammed in with a bunch of other people, and as people queued down the entire length of the train carriage, about 20 minutes into the journey, we all notice water running under the door of the toilet nearby.

This steadily increases over time until a small puddle of piss water has accumulated in our standing area. At this point, none of the train staff were aware, so we used the intercom to make them aware. No one came. The water continues to rise, particularly on one side of the standing area

we were in due to the motion of the train. I'm miserable. It's miserable. I'm not sure if all the crap floating around originated from the overflowing toilet or if all the mangy floors. At one point the train suddenly breaks and a swell of water like a wave runs down the carriage, spreading the joy to all our fellow passengers. We dealt with this for two hours before we reached our destination. I filed for a refund of my ticket since the train was late, but also chucked on an extra 60 quid to replace my shoes,

which they approved once I attached a video of the situation to my claim. A literally shitty train experience? Indeed, Connor. That's awful. That is awful. That is a real bad one.

Oh, my God. That is so bad. Oh, God. What a bad one. I know. It one i know the thing is like if you have a fine if you have if you have a fine experience it doesn't get reported right how can it get worse i'm not defending trains but i think trains are the most carbon efficient way to travel certainly listen i am absolutely with you there i love traveling by train i think most people enjoy traveling by train it's very you don't have to do all the passport control shit unless you're

taking the Eurostar. You can relax, you know, it's incredibly safe. If you need to, you can get off at a different stop earlier or whatever. You can use your phone, you can use the internet. It's great. It's really, it's very peaceful. You see the countryside going past. I love being on a train. I really do. But they need to sort their fucking shit out because this is it's just awful i i want if i want to get out of bournemouth at the moment by train it stops at winchester a basingstoke sorry then you have to get a bus to winchester and then continue from there there's and this is just one train line imagine that multiplied by every train line every network it's fucking shit i think this is the nature of capitalism and profit for profit services right like they just push it and push it and push it until it breaks right like

like um like dollar stores right i watched john oliver thing about dollar stores and obviously they're they're they're a terrible problem because of various things but but he was sort of focusing on how they've kind of just cut costs so much that they have like sometimes an entire store is is just there's just one person that's it and they have to do the the the stacking they have to do like the the service they have to open up and close up and obviously what happens is these little communities where it's just one person they don't want to lose their job they don't want to get in trouble so they rope the rope family and friends in customers start ending up helping and like you know stacking shelves for them you know it's it's kind of like it's just so exploitative right um and that it's it's this is

capitalism in a nutshell right like they're making billions of dollars of profits but they can just they just push and push and push yeah uh. And lower and lower the amount of quality. And I'm sure those trains just don't have the staff, right? Because... Yeah. It's the central problem it always is. And this is an email for another day. I'd like someone to email in about this.

This is something I don't understand why it has to be this way. So go ahead and let me know because I genuinely don't know. Exactly. I doubt that the trains are losing so much money that these cuts have to be no no no i think i think they're making record profits this is how all this shit works like anything that you see that's a really shitty experience

that company is making record profits that's how this works they're private investable it's not the other way around of course they are that's that they they have to be and and the minute they're not they're gone so and then you lose the service that's my question right is that these companies are making record profits but the problem is every year the goal is to increase your profits yes and given that there is you can like if you're running a train network you can't run more trains or have more lines you just have to run that network but the objective is not well we're making money and it's fine the objective is we have to make more money this year than we did last year how can we do that if we

can't add more trains because the service is already jammed we can't have more railway lines because that's too expensive how can we do it we can cut costs and that means that every single year the service gets cut and cut and cut and cut and the prices go up and up and up and up. So year on year, and this is true for pretty much every single company, as they get older, the costs go down, the price comes up. So you end up with this gap forming between what you're getting and how much you're paying for it. So you're paying much more for much less. And you see it in everything from chocolate bars to to trains everything's getting smaller and smaller and the ingredients are getting cheaper and cheaper the source of them from cheaper and cheaper and cheaper places and the price is going up and up

and up and up where does what is the end game there for the entire fucking system what is the end this is this is it though this is the rise of this is how our society has been built over the last 200 years though that all of that stuff you said has been going on forever. It's not a new thing. It's not suddenly happening. This is how everything has worked since ever. No, I disagree. I disagree.

And I'll give you an example. A lot of stuff that people used to buy, the competition was, we're going to make the best X. And it was smaller companies, a lot of the time competing locally with other local businesses. Now, it's vast international corporations who are just trying to i mean look at the streaming services for an example streaming services are not making money like netflix and all this shit they're all fucking losing money all these big things you can't tell me that apple spending billions on these tv shows is somehow making money they're all just trying to run each other out of business and once there's

only one or two left guess what's going to happen? Quality's going to go down, price is going to come up massively, and that's the scenario. And probably the next big thing will come along too, right? It'll be replaced by something before all that happens. So it's always these cycles and these games that the big boys play against each other and stuff, right? I just want to know, why is it so vital that the profits go up year on year? If you're making money as a business, what's wrong with making the same amount of money the next year? It's all automated, though.

It's all supply and demand, right? The problem is that the people who make these decisions don't care. It's like, I'm a university and I'm investing my money. I want to have it where it's going to make the most and so therefore i'm going to invest in the thing that has made the most previously and those things are things which work in this immoral way and they work in this kind of uncaring way like the reason that the dollar stores are so horrible is not because there's someone in charge saying let's be horrible it's because they've just found that that's the natural progression and natural evolution to make the

most money like and it's just it's worked and it's and they don't realize that they're exploiting it and i'm sure you know if any reasonable person found out or does know they feel bad about it of course they know but there's there's kind of no one in charge right this is why so many psychopaths end up leading companies, Fortune 5000 companies, because they're the people who can make these immoral decisions. They don't care. It's like, what's going to make us the most money? I'll dump it all in the river.

Who cares? They rise to the top because they don't have any qualms about doing- There's no decency. Well, exactly. But I genuinely don't think it was always that way i really don't and i think if you look at the history of a lot of businesses and how they started i think a lot of those people had more of a mission bus cycle to make things better than we do now so far the greed only takes you so far and then you know it all falls apart that's the

other thing is is capitalism is overreaching greed to the point where it destroys itself over and over again well i look forward to that day i want to see what happens afterwards just as an experiment you know this is called the t-cart blockade um this is a very long email but i'll sum it up for you um okay ben is on a train i'm gonna i'm gonna lay it out to you until we get to the i'd like to i'd like to imagine that we're in a train yard right now, and that beeping that you can hear is train noise. Yeah, that's a train reversing. This is added background train noises.

It's more immersion for the story that you're about to hear. Ben is on a train, okay? We could even add some train background noises over these episodes. What additional... We could get some more builders in. To do Sips' house and mine. Exactly.

Nice. That's three overlapping, overlapping like fucking beepings so um it's a grueling 14 hour day all right the end of a grueling 14 hour day last train home mentally preparing themselves for the 40 minute walk home from the train station no buses no money for a cab or an uber just wants to get home it's already a 40 minute walk from their station 40 minute walk jesus christ um so they're getting there taking out the headphones they can hear the announcement this will soon be stopping at newport for those of you in the back two carriages the doors will not be opening at the next stop being on one of the back two carriages ben puts his work bag on

goes to the right go starts to make his way down towards the carriages they're going to open um there's an attendant there with the little food cart and Ben asks, can I get past? The attendant says, no. He says, I need to get past you. Otherwise the train, you know, the doors aren't going to open.

And the guy's like, no, no, no, you'll be fine. These doors are going to open any second. I reminded him of the announcement. I said, I needed to get off the train due to exhaustion. I'm not sure if I was pleading

or fuming. He continued to insist the doors would open right up to the point that the train pulled away from the station. Oh, no. I don't think I have ever given anyone a mean look in my life,

but this man did not say a word. He quickly moved the cart out of my way and allowed me to pass. I'm not sure I ever want to know the look on my face at that point, but it must have not been a kind one. My next stop was Bristol Temple Meads, another half hour.

The rest of my journey, I saw the cart attendant a few more times and he could not even look at me. Fortunately enough, I had a friend in Bristol who allowed me to stay at theirs for the night, finally reaching the warm embrace of a bed at 2am, unfortunately down £15 for my ticket home

the following morning. I recently passed my driving test, so will no longer have to deal with public transport as often, fortunately. So yeah, apologies. I would have just pulled the emergency yeah apologies i would have just i would have just pulled the emergency cord i would have pulled that so that's an emergency cord pulled for me right there because otherwise a murder is going to fucking happen on this train is that there's

an emergency this is an emergency i mean honestly if you can see people getting off the train your door's not open and this guy won't move the cart i'm climbing over the car i'm literally climbing over the car or i'm pushing it out of the way. People need to, we're very nice. British people are generally very nice. We're very polite. We generally try to avoid confrontation.

We're generally a little timid when it comes to things like that. And if someone's in my way and I can see that I'm not going to get off my train and I'm fucked, I'm sorry, but the New Yorker comes out.

Get out of my fucking way. Oh, buddy, what are you doing? I'm throwing the car out the window. Oh, my God. This is, do you know what this is? This is us doing like your guys in the street where they're yelling at a traffic warden. Do you know what I mean?

Where you're blowing your top over something. But then again, like, it depends. Like, if it's the last train, you're going to miss your stop, which means you're not going to get home, you know, which for some people, that's important. They have a kid or something else that they need to look after. A relative. There's a lot of reasons why someone might need to get back.

And everyone in the train is like, well, you just missed your stop, mate. And it's like, well, yeah, but that means that I'm stuck on this train for about fucking half an hour in the wrong direction with no way back. Essentially kidnapped by whichever train network that is i think people should start suing these people for kidnapping i'm on a i'm on a train i want to get off you won't let me off kidnapping call the police hello police i've been kidnapped by southwest rail they won't let me off their train on the other hand you can just get a taxi back. That's expensive.

No, you can't. Bristol to Newport, it's like 60 quid. You can claim it back though. But then you, that guy got his shoes claimed back. Maybe you just... He had a video of it.

How are you going to take a video of a guy being a twat with a fucking food cart? I mean, the problem is the guy's running the food carts. Let's be honest. If your job is pushing the little food cart up and down,

not the brightest spot, probably just didn't even really know how trains how the train worked and which doors open and which didn't but then because they work on the train technically i guess they figured they're uh they train stuff you're not you're a cart boy all right cart boy all right this is uh this is from oh that's that's that there's more one that was like i'd say that was like an eight for me. Yeah. It makes you angry because it was a human being face to face, which is why the little guards and the train drivers hide behind those locked doors.

I fear human interaction to begin with, let alone, you know, in a stressful situation where I have to sort of bargain. But no, I'm pulling that emergency cord. Right, right, right. Good. As soon as he's not listening to me, they're stopping that train. If you put it at the station, it won't go anywhere.

Exactly. All right, hold on. I've got another one. It's what it's for. It's like the bell on the bus, you know? Yeah. If you just hold down the bell button when you're walking down the bus,

ding, ding, if you can't get off the bus, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, he's not going anywhere. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. This is from Jamie. In regards to your train journey stories,

my brother needs to go to Birmingham for work. We live in London. We looked at the price of a ticket. It was somewhere in the region of 140 pounds. Jesus Christ. We thought this was ludicrous and decided to find an alternative route. So, a flight from London to Warsaw,

Warsaw to Brussels, Brussels to Edinburgh, and Edinburgh to Birmingham for cheaper than the train from London to Birmingham. Yeah, of course. The train travel in this country is some of the most expensive in the world and some of the worst quality, especially in Europe.

Well, none of it is subsidized by the government. So, effectively... It is. Not a lot of it. I mean, there's like little bits and pieces of it, but it's mostly privatized. And the problem is now, is that because it's privatized and it's publicly traded, it's been invested in too heavily by foreign countries. So basically, every time you pay top dollar to travel on an English train, you're making it really nice for a Dutch person to travel on nice subsidized public transport, or a French person to take nice subsidized train transport. Well, that's good though for everyone. It's good for the French and for the Germans and for the Dutch, but the English

gets screwed over as usual. Hold on, hold on, hold on. The subsidy that we are paying to the train networks is 11 billion pounds. All right. We give 11 billion pounds of taxpayer money to these railway companies. So it is fucking subsidized to the tune of 11 billion quid. It's subsidized. And those companies still make a profit. Yeah, yeah.

So we are giving money to private companies. Sorry, when I say subsidized, I mean, yeah, the companies themselves get subsidies, but they're not passed on to the customers. In other countries where it's still government owned or part government owned or whatever, those subsidies are passed on to the customer. So it's much cheaper to travel by public transport, but not in this country. In this country, it's the complete opposite. All of this depends on a lot of factors, right? And it mostly depends on these new systems.

Like, for example, Malaysia Airlines, right? They had two real bad accidents, right? MH, the one which went missing, and then the one which got shot down over Ukraine. They were, like, fine for, like, 50 years. And then, obviously, they've been fired since. They had this terrible thing. And normally what would happen in that case is the company would go bankrupt or it would be shut down or it'd be rebranded um or it'd be nationalized and that's what happened malaysia took over i think they

already owned like 70 of it but they now own all of it or whatever and and sort of rebooted it right and one of the things that malaysia airlines have is they have like the only flight from Europe to Kuala Lumpur, right? It's like London to Kuala Lumpur, like direct. And that is something which they have a monopoly on, right? And so they can kind of charge whatever they want. And as a result, you know, and also certainly for customers who aren't what they call price sensitive, a lot of people aren't price sensitive, they will pay whatever. This is sometimes why tickets on trains and other things are so expensive because at certain times and certain days they can charge ludicrous prices and people will pay them yeah and you know if you're paying you know if you're some of the factors are like busyness if it's a

really really busy these these these guys have embraced technology to understand that yes we will charge we're on a busy day so people don't have such a bad experience like and and it sucks you know if you pay a lot to go on a day and it's shitty and busy you're like god i paid loads and it's busy sometimes those two things are linked right like it's not always like just gouging and being scummy like i think it is a lot of that but it is also like the modern world we live in you know like if you book in advance if you try a different time or a different day, sometimes, you know, if you want to go on holiday at half term, the flights are double, at least. Right.

They just are because loads more people want to go and they know they can charge it. That's just how it works. I'm kind of lucky that I don't have a family where I can't go on holiday any other time because I save half price holidays. I mean, it literally is yeah um anyway let's let's move on no we're not going to move on no this is it's all about trains this is a train emails are about trains i feel like i'm fucking stuck on a train now and the wi-fi's not working and there's pissy liquid under my feet it's cooling up

exactly you're getting a bit of a waft coming from the bathroom area. So this is from Alex. Regarding your discussion of trains, train companies do something called P-coding, where they cancel trains before the day of service to make their cancellation scores appear better. So it would not surprise me if they are also pulling other shenanigans to manipulate stats. P-coding? P-coding. There is an article on the.gov.uk, the Office of Rail and Road.

Here, I will copy this into the Discord. Here you go. This is the Office of Rail and Road. P-coded cancellations, which is periodic, four weekly statistics on resources available, blah, blah, blah. Operators have been providing OR

with a number of resources available, shortage P-coded pre-cancellations. What does this mean? Well, read it. It means that essentially they're cancelling um trains um so that their cancellation scores look better how does how does cancelling trains because they're cancelling ahead of time right so they think something's gonna be cancelled so they cancel it before it gets cancelled i guess so yeah and that

reduces their cancellation apparently apparently i mean Apparently. I mean, okay. Man, trains are nuts, eh? Yeah. They just- you know, the problem is, is they've just been around too long. This is- They've been allowed to fester. This is people gaming the systems. They're festering.

This is some fucking busybody- Get rid of them. Some fucking bald asshole. Not bald, necessarily. Old asshole. Wow. Oh god, sorry. Wow!

Wow! I just imagined some jobs worth worth the truth comes flying out of it i don't think of you as bald remember he doesn't identify you as a bald man wow that's not your choice i don't see you when i'm doing this podcast and so i do you feel like you have a full head putting his foot in it some some some gammon faced man hey come on now who's who's jobs job who's been promoted and he's saving the company i'm saving the company a hundred thousand dollars a year in yeah yeah government subsidies they all end up over here too pre-cancelling these times the Jersey government loves to get these guys over as consultants

and pay them millions of pounds because they've got a track record of being useless in the UK already so why not come over here for a couple of years on a nice little vacation be fucking useless as well it's crazy they're probably doing some scubby things behind the scenes and we should crack down

on those. You want to hear about scubby things? You know what's really cool? Did I not, I don't know if I told you about this, but when I was in, when we went to France in October, we were traveling back and we, I told you guys that we did, we went on trains and boats and everything. We didn't, we didn't fly. So we took a train back to

Rennes and we stayed overnight in Rennes because at this point we knew that our boat was cancelled. So we didn't make it all the way back to Saint-Malo, which is where we would have taken the boat from. So we decided to stop in Rennes and stay in Rennes and then travel back to Saint-Malo just to sort of prolong getting to St. Malo for when the boat was actually leaving, which is like two days later because the weather was so bad. So when we were in Wren, we used the metro there and it is completely unmanned. There's not a single member of staff anywhere. Even the trains are like automatic. There's no people in them they're just like these two the two three carriage uh metro trains and they they're they're self-driving and there's there's no there's

not a member of staff anywhere to be seen like if you have a ticket problem or whatever everything is automated it was kind of crazy actually but neat as well like i it it it was it was pretty clean like you could tell it was like surveyed. There's cameras and stuff everywhere. Occasionally, like there'd be police men or women walking around, you know, kind of like because they're train stations. But overall, it just seemed to work really well. Like everybody just knew where to get the tickets from little machines to go through, to beep the ticket through. And you could just walk through without even beeping the ticket. But I think that's what all the cameras are for.

Basically, I think they go back after you, you know, retrospectively and say, yeah, you did not, you didn't beep in this time and we have you on camera doing it and we're going to fine you or whatever. And maybe that's less work than just having a lot of people standing around, checking tickets, helping people through those gates and stuff. So you're saying it's a kind of AI-based person recognition system? I guess it must be, yeah. Because there's, I mean, you could just walk through any of these barriers anytime and you don't even need to beep. They're just wide open. You just, if you have your ticket, you have like, basically you have travels loaded onto your ticket. You can buy like 10,

20 at a time or whatever and then when it runs out it tells you that you need to get more or whatever but a couple of times we were kind of stuck and because we had like i've got two kids and then a baby in like a in a stroller we got stuck behind barriers with the stroller and stuff and then we just we just had to go through and you know i just swiped the card like 20 times just to make sure and oh i see because there was no one there yeah exactly no there's not a single person there to help you with anything and if you don't speak any french you're not going to get any help from anybody else there either exactly so it's like but at the same time it was it was lax

enough where you could navigate it you know You could potentially get in trouble for not paying or whatever, but you'd never really get stuck, you know? It was almost foolproof. It was pretty impressive, actually. I mean, it's not a huge city, granted, but it was neat. I just think it was really good. Like, a little bit different to anything else I'd ever seen. So there you go.

There you go. Like a little positive, like little... And now back to reality. Let me dive in. We've got an insider now. Get those humans out of those jobs. That's what I say. I've got an email from an insider,

someone who works for the train. I work in operations with one of the big UK train companies. Not Southeastern. Firstly, your conspiracy theory is absolutely correct. Oh no. Delay and cancellation KPIs

tend to lean heavily on start and end destinations a train is only properly classed as cancelled if it doesn't reach its final destination i near it as a daily commuter i've suffered from this so many times where my normal 15 minute journey home from birmingham skips every stop until kidderminster which is 40 minutes away if you're caught with your earphones in or not paying attention it makes for a very long journey home the government encourages operators to increase prices annually even though some are making ridiculous internal profits also it gets a lot of media attention but i think the level of cancellation and delay on the railway is so much higher than even reported to the public my company and at least two others i know was so bad during december 2023 they outright defaulted

on their contract with the Department for Transport and theoretically should have been taken over by the government. Absolute madness. But as an employee, you won't hear me complain too much because they pay staff

exceptionally well, mostly. And the free slash discount to travel for staff is worth nearly as much as the salary. Jesus. Well, see, there you go. Pays to actually work for the enemy if they're if the very few jobs that remain down from the inside yeah and if you want to know even more this is from another railway we've got another whistle

blower on the line that's the whistle there buddy it sounded You did sound a little bit Michael Jackson when you did that. Well, he did the voiceover for all the trains. The train is coming in. Mind the gap. In Tri-Force 280, you asked why trains sometimes skip stops. This will almost always be because the train is running late. Decisions on the railway have to be made for the greater good. And skipping a stop is sometimes better than that.

If you're on a train and you're getting ready to get off at your stop, they just decide to skip it. Yeah. Fuck. That is crazy. Yeah. That is so inconvenient to me. Like, I need to get off at my stop. I know.

Yes. You've paid to get off at that fucking stop and now they're like no sorry you're stuck so um they like look into a refund which is delay repay you can get a refund through that system but the thing is i'm still fucked like i still might be fun yeah on my way to a job interview or a flight yeah so you can get the train ticket refunded yeah what about the cost yeah we just decided to skip the heathrow stop uh yeah executive decision sorry yeah sorry sorry everybody on the train otherwise the next train would be late yeah the thing is then the problem is if if you're late then then you know you're late leaving and then

some other services yeah and it's like yeah it's it compounds the problem oh here's what's why that's why when you're i this has happened to me a lot. A train will be late, and then the train after it, that was what I'm going to get, is then cancelled, right? Because that first train was late. I guess it would have made that train late. It would have made every train late after it. Yeah.

That must be why there's so many cancellations now. Yes, yeah, yeah. Because they're like, oh, shit. The whole system is barely hanging together. And if this one's late, then that service leaving so-and-so is going to be late, which is going to make that late. So it's like a cascade failure. That does make sense. It makes sense. together, and if this one's late, then that service leaving so-and-so is going to be late, which is going to make that late.

So it's like a cascade failure. That does make sense. It makes sense, but here's the problem. The people are paying the cost for their shitty planning and lousy service. So as everyone was saying, the greater good is helping to make sure this dog shit train service runs on time, so they don't get fucking fined. I don't give a fuck. Let me out! let me out yeah

also i did watch another john oliver thing about freight trains yeah i saw that complaining about those which was amazing in america and how you know again it's just it's just corporate hunger for money they're fucking awful and not like maintaining not maintaining things properly and also just running like so the way they do it now is they run these mega long trains yeah like miles multiple miles like in australia they do that there's aussie cold trains right yes they are they're all automated i think on perth and they're not going through like rural areas or you know going over crossings but it's or even like stopping halfway across a crossing because they're so long these trains that when it gets to night time and the driver can't work them anymore they just have to

stop them at a siding but siding is like you know you was built for a small train not a three mile long one so they just stay blocking loads of roads sometimes it's the only road into like a town i've i've had that i've been in a in a town and the train is going and you just got to sit there and people get out of their cars. Man. You get an hour and like just chilling. Like there's no point. Isn't that mad?

Chaps, I'm going to have to dip because I've got a meeting now. But you guys carry on. Okay. We'll wrap it up, Flex. Yeah. You wrap it up. I've got to go. Sorry.

Okay. No problem. That's all right. Keep the emails coming. Okay. Bye. Oh my God. He closed the door on us.

Wow. That was a bit of an abrupt end. Holy crap. That is... That's our podcast. That's our mailbag. Watch. Please don't...

I'm filling in for PFLAX here, but please do not email in any further questions about trains. No, I agree. We never want to speak about them again. We've talked about them for well over an hour, it feels like. I don't want to be corrected on any of the things i've said today no the mail we're not going to do a mailbag mail we just don't find them that interesting anymore either i think we've we've had our full film at this point but it's it's i don't want to

start some recursive thing where where people send in letters about things that we've talked about on the letters show and then send it he's back he's returned enough train ship all right thanks for listening