On the NR General Discussion Forum, it only needs a mention of Yorkshire having better units than Lancashire...and vice-versa... then two champions (one for each side of the Pennines) reach for the "blogosphere" and a verbal Battle of the Roses then ensues.
Very true; the unification of the two halves of the Regional Railways North empire seems to have only served to heighten the entrenched, bitter rivalry that exists between the two sides of the pennines. How on earth a railway company with the name "Lancashire & Yorkshire" managed to function one hundred years ago when the divide still appears to exist in the present day is beyond me!
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What "plenty of stories of people losing heads" apart from the one serious incident with a kettle charter in North Wales in the mid 90s I don't think there has been anything of sort since has there?
I was on a Manchester HST with a couple of other bashers once, and the guard regaled us with the tale of an American tourist in the mid nineties who, as the train was pulling out of Edinburgh Waverley was facing backwards to film the view of the castle by leaning out of vestibule window. The next thing to happen was that he cracked the back of his head off one of the tunnel portals and collapsed on the floor with a massive L-shaped gash in the back of his head, apparently still breathing but otherwise braindead.
Perhaps it was just a tall tale to scare us from leaning out of the windows or maybe it's true, I can fully understand the guards' concern for bashers leaning out of the windows when the train is travelling at speed, but to group us in the same league as an oblivious tourist seemed a bit peculiar: A bashers attention is completely focused on the train they are traveling on and the line ahead, rather than gawping at the scenery while facing backward, so logically there's much less chance of such an incident as the one described above happening.
