TRAINS are so unreliable they have to come up with a host of stupid excuses to keep travellers docile. Here’s the truth behind their lies.

Signal failure

An excuse so tedious it’s designed to glide right off your brain. The public don’t know whether it’s incredibly dangerous or fairly mundane, or if signals are extremely delicate pieces of equipment, but it’s a vague enough reason that stops people getting cross at human members of the crew. The real reason, that the infrastructure is knackered beyond repair, may cause alarm.

A shortage of train staff

As with any lie, there is a grain of truth to this statement. There likely is a lack of train staff, but only because you have the misfortune to be travelling on a Sunday when the crew are not obliged to work. You’re usually on the side of underpaid, striking workers, but when you’re trying to get out of London Paddington your patience wears a bit thin. Of course the train operator might just not know how many staff they need for a business they’ve been running for decades. Totally understandable.

The driver is delayed

‘Delayed’ is an optimistic word. It implies that the driver is hurrying there, maybe eating a bite of toast on the move while he frantically rushes to the station. In reality, the scheduled driver is fast asleep and some poor member of staff is trying to find a standby who’s not in the pub and happy to do an impromptu jaunt from London to Glasgow. A process that will add eight hours to the ETA.

Animals on the line

This one’s intended to lighten the mood. Who can’t help but crack a smile at the thought of a cow or a herd of sheep innocently straying onto the line, so long as they don’t end up smeared all over the front carriage? You can’t help but suspect it means there’s been some serious, massive f**k up further down the line and staff are doing their best to keep spirits up. If they start handing out free coffee and biscuits, you’re likely going back the way you came.

Overhead line problem

Not only is this insultingly vague, you’re not even riding on a network that has them. Do the train crew not have the faintest clue what’s gone wrong, but they need to say something, anything, to keep travellers quiet? Is a stopped train blocking the line, or are generations of underfunding finally starting to take their toll on the knackered network? You’ll never know, but squeezing some pennies out of Delay Repay will make you feel slightly better about being a powerless victim of Avanti West Coast. Again.