Well this is my second blog and I a still not quite sure on how often I should / need to do this but I am sure with some coaching from my friends I am sure it will come.
The good news is that I have check with my dear friend JP and he is more than happy that I have emulated his blog name by using "confused of Cornwall" as opposed to his "confused of Calcutta"
When is a Fire not a Fire
In my day job I travel on the train between Cornwall & London using First Great Western (GGW) Trains who have the franchise for the South West.
The one thing that stands out about this company is their staff, their commitment in adversity is beyond question, more on this in a later blog - onto the main point.
On Monday night I took the over night sleeper service from Cornwall to London, unfortunately due to nothing short of inefficiency with FGW I was unable to book a cabin bearth so I ended up in the First Class carriage working until about 2 am at which point I was going "boss eyed" and decided to try and have a sleep for a couple of hours, however, just as I was about to try and sleep looked into the adjoining coach and saw it was filled with smoke, so I did something I always wanted to do ever since I was a child, pull the stop cord on the train.
After finding the crew who where very puzzled as to what the smoke alarms had not gone off they started looking for the cause of the smoke.
It took 45 mins of scratching their heads to find out that a Network Rail track grinder had been grinding the tracks in front of us and had left its grinding dust behind which our train was picking up in the air-conditioning and then spreading it around the train as a very fine, very dirty mist, hence why it looked like smoke but did not set of the alarms.
The crew did a great job in solving the problem and keeping the customers happy without any panic, as to what the company does to compensate the passengers I have yet to see but I would not expect to much.....
