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Quick getaways turned into nocturnal rail adventures
The Independent
|April 20, 2025
Simon Calder recounts how evening express trains became overnight sleepers on the eve of the bank holiday weekend
“Earphones off, put your phones away.” The railway staff in highvisibility jackets were serious about safety. They were evacuating hundreds of travellers from one stricken train to another. And that required barking instructions to passengers so they had no distractions from the task ahead.
Maundy Thursday had ended an hour earlier. The day before Good Friday is always one of the busiest on Britain’s railways. Besides the usual commuter traffic, plenty of travellers make long-distance journeys to their Easter destination. Many of them were wisely seeking to dodge the Network Rail engineering projects that temporarily gum up parts of the network.
This story is from the April 20, 2025 edition of The Independent.
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