Early April Fools

[trentside]

A local news website in Lincoln has come up with a very convincing April Fools joke (they don't publish at weekends, so it's gone up today) related to Lincoln's infamous railway crossings.

Credit to James Hazel (the reporter) as no-one has twigged yet. I'd comment but it requires you to use Facebook;

http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2012/03/...egal-fix-for-lincoln-barrier-crossing-delays/

 

[deltic1989]

I'm surely not the only one that wishes it wasn't an April fool's though.

 

[Failed Unit]

Didn't they run an April Fool years ago about running the railway underground?

 

[Tracked]

Surely we've run out of foreign sounding names that are an anagram of April Fool by now :roll:

 

[142094]

Was in Lincoln last weekend for an hour and a half. Nice day so I decided to buy an ice cream and have a look at what happens at the crossing. I'm sure if Network Rail wanted some easy money they could prosecute all the people who went against the wig-wags when I was there - must have been around 20 people and a few cars in the space of 10 minutes.

 

[David]

It doesn't help though when the barriers come down for several minutes at a time, then are raised again with nothing going past ....

 

[142094]

It doesn't help though when the barriers come down for several minutes at a time, then are raised again with nothing going past ....

Same as at any level crossing (unless it happens more frequently at Lincoln I don't know).

 

[YorkshireBear]

There was one in last paragraph of mdoern railways about running scabrough light railway to whitby :P

 

[David]

Same as at any level crossing (unless it happens more frequently at Lincoln I don't know).

Last August when I was driving down to Norfolk, I was held up at the crossing as the barriers dropped twice, stayed down for several minutes before raising again with no trains passing. I got across the level crossing a couple of minutes later, only for the same thing to happen again behind me.

 

[Madge Wildfire]

Didn't they run an April Fool years ago about running the railway underground?

I dont know, but many many years ago Railway Modeller ran a story about a person who had built a model of part of the London Underground system under his floorboards.

It started quite sensibly for a few paragraphs, and then just became more and more bizarre until even I realised it was a spoof article; but it was very well done and IIRC it even had some photos purporting to show the layout.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Is it just a myth that you can only make April Fools jokes until noon on that day....or is it all day ?

 

[DaveNewcastle]

The tradition is certainly a before-noon opportunity to 'fool' someone, but for some, the whole day is available for pranks. One tradition specifically confines physically tripping someone up to the afternoon.

(I'm guessing that you have some French) Here's a Belgian newspaper summary of the April Fool stories (Poisson d'Avril) from other papers. It was created before 2pm indicating the presumption that the opportunity had passed. http://www.levif.be/info/actualite/insolite/les-poissons-d-avril-peches-ce-matin/article-4000075367591.htm

 

[Ivo]

I've seen previously that anyone who attempts an April Fool after noon is considered an April Fool themselves!

Unfortunately, Wikipedia seems to have lost track of most of the April Fools informaiton it had a couple of days ago, because some had the bright idea of allowing the article to be sabotaged on April 1st!

 

[Schnellzug]

Incidentally, have you seen Wiki Pedia's main page? More subtle than some, I must say.

 

[Butts]

The Independent on Sunday had an article about a "hosepipe amnesty" which involved handing them in and collecting them after the drought had ended.

I take it this was a "wind up"