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Most unusual luggage you’ve travelled with or seen on a passenger service?

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Peter C

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I was doing my teacher training at Sussex University in the seventies and decided to take a white plywood model of a regular icosahedron* from the Resource Centre to my placement school at Three Bridges. I lived in Hove and so caught a rush-hour 4VEP. It just fitted through the slam-door, and sat on my knee for the half-hour journey, much to the amusement of fellow passengers.

* if you're interested: a regular icosahedron is a convex polyhedron made up of equilateral triangles with 20 faces, 30 edges and 12 vertices. It is one of the five Platonic solids, and the one with the most sides. It has five equilateral triangular faces meeting at each vertex.
Wow! And a maths lesson in there too!
Was it heavy? I assume it may not have been, being plywood.

-Peter
 
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ANDREW_D_WEBB

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A full size BR double arrow of the sort fixed to the side of locos in the 1990s. Bought it at Steam on the Met and took it home, gaining a few looks along the way, people probably thinking it was stolen!
 

Peter C

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On a GWR from OXF to PAD one evening, I sat opposite a lady who was sat at a table with a fairly young lamb sat in an open topped cardboard box next to her.

(Apparently rejected by its mother, she was taking it home to her house in London from the farm she was doing work experience on!)
That's wholesome. I travel OXF - PAD sometimes and have never seen that! :)

-Peter
 

ChiefPlanner

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Nearly forgot -after the Watford Junction crash in 1996 , we provided a much beefed up service via the DC lines to Euston (the main line was seriously blocked from Thursday 1800 to 0500 on Monday) - virtually a 24 hour service with every 313 commandeered to run extra services , plus some 6 car workings.

It all went off reasonably well , apart from on the Sunday evening - a Virgin train from the Lakes arrived with a team of outward bound guys , carrying a fairly large canoe.

Being a practical (and by then seriously exhausted Operations Manager) I took a view that this was a challenge. Unlocked the rear cab end door on the 313 and slid same item into the cab and through unlocking the vestibule door , accommodated said item on the floor down the rear car. They were delighted and sat around it. We did tell Euston what was coming their way , and they dealt with it with no adverse comments.

"Customer service in adversity"
 

route:oxford

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About 25 years ago, I got talking to a chap sitting next to me on the train from Edinburgh to London. He asked me a couple of times to keep an eye on his luggage when he went to the loo or the buffet car.

Shortly after leaving Kings X (the area was considerably rougher back then) he was killed by the chaps he was meeting as part of a drug deal.

Turns out the luggage was rammed full of cash.
 

mike57

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It would have been early 80's, a friend of mine had acquired a piece of solid mahogany after some refurbishment in his city office, about 6ft long and 3x9 inches, I worked in London during the week at that time, so picked it up Friday lunchtime, and tied some ropes around it to make a handle, and took it on the underground from Moorgate to King X then by HST to York where my car was parked. It was very heavy, got some odd looks, but got it home OK and it was turned into a shelf over my fireplace, cleaned up and polished it looked amazing, with a deep red brown colour. But when I picked it up it was black and part covered in paint. No doubt some people thought 'why doesn't he just chuck it in the nearest skip'
 

181

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I’m currently travelling with a small set of stepladders

I've done that on a few occasions.

I took a scythe by train once (plus a bus to the station), although only the wooden handle part was visible, the blade being detached and well wrapped up inside a rucksack. The man who ran the course where I learned how to use it said that he'd once taken two scythes to Regents' Park on the Underground in a similar manner.

I once saw a couple of gentlemen carrying a cardboard box with a couple of live chickens getting off a train.

I remember once seeing a box of day-old chicks being carried as a parcel on the Cambrian Coast line. I suspect that this was probably quite common in days gone by, but on this occasion Class 150s had recently been introduced, so there was no longer a guards' van, and the box of chicks went on the floor of the tip-up seat area next to the feet of the passengers who were sitting on some of the seats.
 

AlbertBeale

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I've done that on a few occasions.

I took a scythe by train once (plus a bus to the station), although only the wooden handle part was visible, the blade being detached and well wrapped up inside a rucksack. The man who ran the course where I learned how to use it said that he'd once taken two scythes to Regents' Park on the Underground in a similar manner.

I remember once seeing a box of day-old chicks being carried as a parcel on the Cambrian Coast line. I suspect that this was probably quite common in days gone by, but on this occasion Class 150s had recently been introduced, so there was no longer a guards' van, and the box of chicks went on the floor of the tip-up seat area next to the feet of the passengers who were sitting on some of the seats.

In Red Star Parcels days (and what an excellently useful service that was for getting items round the country in a hurry, station-to-station, pre-privatisation - I frequently used it between St Pancras and Nottingham), the yellow duplicate (triplicate?) forms you filled in when you handed over the item and the payment included saying what category of item you were sending; printed on the form was a special classification for sending pigeons.
 

Peter C

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Odd things I've taken on the train:
  • A small chest of drawers
  • A large swivel chair
Both times I sat on the piece of furniture when travelling.
Please tell me that at some point the swivel chair went sliding off down the train?! :)
(Assuming you weren't hurt if it did so).

-Peter
 

AlterEgo

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I once saw someone at Birmingham New St travel with a gym bike - you know, one of those static ones. Placed in the bike storage on a 220.
 

Peter C

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I once saw someone at Birmingham New St travel with a gym bike - you know, one of those static ones. Placed in the bike storage on a 220.
I wonder if that would be considered the same as taking a normal bike on a train!....

-Peter
 

Shimbleshanks

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In Red Star Parcels days (and what an excellently useful service that was for getting items round the country in a hurry, station-to-station, pre-privatisation - I frequently used it between St Pancras and Nottingham), the yellow duplicate (triplicate?) forms you filled in when you handed over the item and the payment included saying what category of item you were sending; printed on the form was a special classification for sending pigeons.

Back in the 1980s, Red Star tried to start a beefed-up service to carry heavier items of freight called, I think, Track 29. They forgot to specify maximum dimensions for items that could be carried and one of the many problems they had with it was a lifeboat manufacturer in Barrow-in-Furness trying to manoeuvre very long rescue boats into a BG.
A pity the service flopped because I always thought a properly managed freight-on-passenger-train system could have had great potential.
 

PHILIPE

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This one didn't quite happen as the Conductor stopped him boarding when a chap with a travelling community background tried to take his horse on a train at Wrexham bound for Holyhead to catch the Irish Ferry. He had already taken the horse (but a very short stay !!!) in a Wetherspoons in Wrexham and then went to A & E at the Maelor Hospital stating is horse was ill. The occurrence was about 10 years ago now.
 

Peter C

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This one didn't quite happen as the Conductor stopped him boarding when a chap with a travelling community background tried to take his horse on a train at Wrexham bound for Holyhead to catch the Irish Ferry. He had already taken the horse (but a very short stay !!!) in a Wetherspoons in Wrexham and then went to A & E at the Maelor Hospital stating is horse was ill. The occurrence was about 10 years ago now.
Wow!
Maybe the Wetherspoons and the A&E visits were linked somehow... maybe the horse developed a fondness for Welsh ale! :)

-Peter
 

Chris M

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On the DLR this afternoon a fellow passenger was travelling with a ~4ft high tree, possibly a bay tree but I'm not certain.
 

NORMAN471

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This one didn't quite happen as the Conductor stopped him boarding when a chap with a travelling community background tried to take his horse on a train at Wrexham bound for Holyhead to catch the Irish Ferry. He had already taken the horse (but a very short stay !!!) in a Wetherspoons in Wrexham and then went to A & E at the Maelor Hospital stating is horse was ill. The occurrence was about 10 years ago now.
I think there was a CCTV photo of this shown on TV some while ago that I remember seeing. Local news perhaps.
 

Bletchleyite

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Odd things I've taken on the train:
  • A small chest of drawers

I've seen someone happily loading a large chest of drawers which appeared to be fully loaded with clothes into the "van area" of a Class 150/1 bound for Blackpool North at Preston. I think you do generally see more of this sort of thing in London, though, as car ownership is much lower. You get all sorts on the Tube.

Slightly OT, but still notable, I was on a bus at Bangor bound for Caernarfon and someone got on and loaded a sailing boat mast down the aisle as if it was the most normal thing to do. The driver didn't object and flogged him a ticket.
 

cav1975

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I took a complete ground signal from Woking to Ryde Esplanade by train and ferry about 30 years ago. It is now installed on the IW Steam Railway.
 

rick pike

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It was back in May during the last day of booked HSTs I saw a women carrying a stainless steel kitchen sink/draining board across the concourse at Paddington.
I heard a story of how a Red Star Parcel office desk collapsed when someone tried to send a car engine
 

Ken H

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On a GWR from OXF to PAD one evening, I sat opposite a lady who was sat at a table with a fairly young lamb sat in an open topped cardboard box next to her.

(Apparently rejected by its mother, she was taking it home to her house in London from the farm she was doing work experience on!)
surprised that wasn't baaa'd
 

Ken H

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I took a rolled up carpet on a Brussels tram once. unrolled it was about 5' x 4'

I also, with the missus, took 2 5' tall plants in pots on the tram there too (from the Sunday market by Bruxelles Midi)
 

MotCO

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I took a rolled up carpet on a Brussels tram once. unrolled it was about 5' x 4'

I also, with the missus, took 2 5' tall plants in pots on the tram there too (from the Sunday market by Bruxelles Midi)


There are often large plants carried on buses and trains after the last day of the Chelsea Flower Show when there is a sale of exhibits.
 
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