Sunday, July 24, 2005

....because they never go all the way

On Saturday, I travelled on a train called "Doctor Who."

No, really: someone at Virgin Trains decided that it would be a wheeze if all their "Voyager" trains were named after famous "voyagers". There's one called "Charles Darwin" and one called "Marco Polo". (The "Voyager" trains are the ones with no space for luggage, toilets that don't work, and a buffet carriage which sells copies of the Da Vinci Code.)

There was even a little plaque in one of vestibules that gave a potted summary of "Doctor Who", taken out of one of the standard guide books. He's been on TV since 1963, has a TARDIS, left Gallifrey with his Grandaughter Susan, etc.

Unfortunatley, they seemed to have left a bit of text off the bottom. Presumably, it should have read:

"His TARDIS continuously breaks down, and he finds it impossible to predict what time he is going to arrive anywhere."






(I looked on the Virgin Website to try to find out the actual text of the plaque. It didn't have it, but it did inform me that they had planned a ceremony at Kennsington Olympia to give locomotive 221122 the name "Docotor Who", but, er, it had to be cancelled because it broke down at Three Bridges.)

3 comments:

MartynEm said...

It could be worse; one of the Pendolinos (which share all of the Voyagers' faults but are in fact smaller, with less room, for more passengers) is called:

Virgin Invader

Seriously.

Nick Mazonowicz said...

Keeps getting cancelled?

Anonymous said...

would love to be knitting a Doctor Who scarf when travelling on this train.
http://www.doctorwhoscarf.com/