If you've paid close attention to my rants page, you would realise that up until now, I have never made two seperate rants on the same subject. I've tried to avoid this so that my site doesn't become stale. If I've got an update or extra information on a topic that was discussed on a rant, I'd usually post a new thread on my forum. I've avoided this today for two reasons:
1) As I've said before, it's been a while since I've posted something on this site, so I might as well do something now.
2) This bit is something that I find too large and important to post on my forum. It's really a rant on its own, so it might as well be here.
Since I've now gotten these technicalities out of the way, I might as well begin. It happened on the Monday of last week (9th of February). I was off to school again after an uneventful weekend. Today was a special day on the school calander, for today was the day of the annual Swimming Sports competition. I wasn't competing in it, so usually I would have just gone home, but it was a compulsory event for all students so I had to go as a spectator (this itself should be another rant). I took the train that I normally took, which arrived on time at my station as usual at 6:56. All was going normally until about 10 minutes later when the train just stopped.
As you might have figured out if you read my other public transport rant, you would know that the public transport system I use is appauling. The fact that the trains I travel on sometimes lose power for several minutes makes even the New York Ssubway system look good. It happened in this case too, just as it passed a level crossing. At first, I wasn't so concerned. It was normal after all. But as the train started to remain moitionless for about half an hour, I, as well as the other passengers on the train, started to get annoyed. By this time, the train driver was walking up and down the train, trying to find out what was wrong. They didn't even tell the passengers what was wrong! I assumed that even the driver didn't know!
A student from a different school called her dad to find out what was going on. From what I heard at least, her dad called the train company to find out what was wrong. The advice he got back was that the train was going to be fixed within half an hour and also told him not to get out of the train and walk away (the reason for this was that we stopped on a piece of track that links up to the main line. We were right in front of the main line and could see the train going past). However, most people didn't call the company and therefore couldn't heed their advice. I saw about 50 people leave the train and walk away. In hindsight, they were the smart ones.
By this time, many of the passengers where calling their bosses telling them that they were going to be late. One was even swearing and cursing and talking about ............
