Another hot sticky humid day today and weather wise not at all enjoyable. Slow as well as the heat kept many people in at home.

Unlike yesterday which was mixed traction today we ran a diesel only service for the main train, and as always it’s interesting to see how people react to no steam.

Take for example one chap, he qualified for the most obvious question of the day award and ended up winning by a mile. He looked at the time board which stated diesel against all services, he looked at me and asked “No steam today?” When he found that the only steam on the railway was Thomas pulling the TPO it was as though his world had collapsed. His shoulders sagged and he shuffled off as though the world had ended.

Then not 15 minutes later another gentleman came up looked at the board saw it was diesel and said to his wife “Excellent it’s diesel let’s travel”.

Now this brings up the fact that whatever we do we can’t please everybody no matter what we do and what we run. Yesterday was a good example with first and third service being steam and second and fourth being diesel hauled. We had moans that not all services were steam hauled and we had moans that not all were diesel hauled. As I say no matter what we do we can’t please everybody, so we have I suppose to reach a happy medium and that’s run what we can on the day. Locomotives will sometimes fail for example, there is no way of avoiding that whatever we do, when this happens some people behave as though the world has ended and they will have to sacrifice their first born to make things better.

It’s a funny old world dealing with the general public and even the most level headed punter can suddenly become a pain in the rear in the blink of an eye and for the most stupid reason.

I remember a few months ago when a family arrived on the platform to find the last train of the day had left for Peterborough which was where they wanted to go to. You would have thought the world had ended, the father asked loudly what I could do about the fact the train had gone. My answer was to suggest they walk to the main road at the top of the Mere and get a bus. His only comment was “It won’t be steam though”.

Keeping as much of a straight face as I could I pointed out that we were running diesel that day anyway so the train they had missed was not steam either. He just looked at me and then at his wife as she just burst out laughing. He walked off in a sulk and his wife asked me to excuse him as he could be the most childish of the family at times.

Come to think of it I have never seen them since.

So there we are perhaps we really run a crèche for adult children. There’s a thought!!