Me and the Aussie Rock are weekend warriors. On Friday nite its off on the train to Masterton - to pick up the jalopy and then the bliss of 10 acres of rural paradise up the Rangitumau Valley where we camp in a shed that will one day be our house.
Anyway we quite like the train. Its pretty comfy and you if you get to the station early enough you can get a seat with a table and a power plug - in fact all seats have at least one power plug. So its a blogger delight - you can plug in juice up the wireless card and write for an hour and a half or work f needs must.
So its a bloody hot day here in Masterton and we arrive early. This grumpy curmudgeonly old train conductor - with a pommy accent was on the platform - looking - well shitty. Anyway I had my lap top and my backpack. normally I shove my backpack in the racks above and the lap top bag under my feet.
Anyway he barked at me and said that all my luggage would have to go into the back of the train.
I told him that my lap top would stick with me. He said that he was " just enforcing the rules and luggage had to go in the back. Now this is about my 15th train trip and the first time I have had this problem.
So off I went and duly put my little backpack down the back of the train.
Now all of this would have been fine but guess what ? I have counted at least 3 big bags and 15 back packs in the this carriage alone. I can tolerate rules - its inconsistency, and officious wankers I don't like.
And while I am at it the air conditioning needs sorted . Its doesn't work.
However it is a very pretty trainride and for $15 bucks one way - v good value.
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6 comments:
We know all about grumpy train conductors - control freaks. My wife and I almost got chucked off the Jung-frau train at the last stop before you go into the mountain by an officious Swiss Miss. All because we did not have our Eurail documentation with us - we had shown it at the station in Grindelwald when buying our tickets and then put it back in the safe in our hotel room as we were not told to take it with us.
The bolshy Swiss Miss (god forbid if she was a Mrs I would hate to be her husband) inferred we were ripping off the system. The train was held up for close to 5 minutes while we debated the issue with her.
The inconsistent enforcement of the rules thing really grates me too.
I hope you snuck your pack back when he wasn't looking.
LOL isn't the smallness of NZ interesting - have friends in Rangitumau so know exactly what your bit of paradise must look like.
It's very good value because all us Porsche Cayenne driving wankers in Auckland subsidise it through our fuel tax :-)
For some reason never really had problems with the train conductors in Asia. But then I did play the 'dumb foreigner can't speak the local lingo' card so they couldn't be bothered enforcing them.
The Pom was probably recruited by the Unions after it became KiwiRail - there used to be heaps of them as the mainstay of the Railway Unions and causing petty officious problems like that - back to the future, thanks Cullen.
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