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Train Stations: secretly malevolent

What is it with train-stations? Have they always been evil places intent on wreaking havoc at every opportunity? No matter where you go in the world, if you scratch beneath the surface you can find something that just isn’t quite right. Something out to get you–

Here are my top three train-station-gripes:

1) The curse of the awful people-hating vending machine:

What could possibly be evil about a vending machine I hear you exclaim? Well, allow me to inform you.

I am yet to come across a train station vending machine that isn’t positioned in such a way–as well as extremely frustrating to use causing you to fumble with your hands out of rage–as to allow you to ‘accidentally’ loose your coins when you drop them; if it isn’t the position of the machine itself—which just so happens to be located exactly behind a wide groove in the pavement which appears to be some kind of drainage filled with coins—then it’s the angle of the pavement, cleverly slanted so that if you drop your coins in the middle of the platform the money will miraculously find its way into said drain–

2) Then we have the train station designers’ utter contempt for blind people:

This is something I only noticed the other day, when I’d had a skin-full and could barely see the ground; there it was, a thin strip of brail a few inches wide right at the edge of the train platform! Behind it potential death! Nothing before it to warn you of what may be to come. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange to you?

3) Finally we have the toilets on train:

Every single toilet I have ever used on a train has had a broken door. Every one. Sometimes I think that the train companies employ people to deliberately break the mechanisms, possibly installing CCTV cameras which they use to tape the debacles that ensue, then sending the tapes to You’ve Been Framed and making more than a bit of extra cash; and if not the door—and honestly, when not the door—then the toilet won’t be working. Honestly! Train stations get me!

Before I go: Exciting news everyone, MD just got a few months work with a dragons den company that sells cotton kaftan, I expect freebies!