Winner of Locomotive Driver Of The Year says he's well chuffed

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Train delays due to 'nationwide comms fault', not Russian hackers

Recent chaos on the railways was just down to comforting old bumbling British inefficiency and nothing to do with Russian cyber attacks, according to a government spokesman.

‘It’s definitely not a cyberattack by a hostile foreign state.  We are so well-prepared for that, it’s not true.   Definitely.  Not true.

‘Investigations are underway.  We expect the problem is down to some agency staff member in IT who missed out a minus sign.  Or spilt their tea on the server.  Or forgot to do the back-up.  Or somebody cut through a critical power line.  Or something overheated.  Or because key software is running on Windows 3.1, or a ZX81 or something.   But not a Russian hack.  Definitely.

‘I must protest about the media frenzy that claims this is down to foreign hackers.   There’s an effing D notice on that, for god’s sake.   It’s just an ordinary, boring, every day cock-up.   All those ThikTok people are trying to whip up another stupid QAnon/AlAnon/OnAnOn conspiracy theory.  It’s all TikTokTosh.   NOT A HACK.  Got that?’

We approached Great British Railways for a comment, but their phones were down.

Hornby Trains to be nationalised

The Labour Government has laid out plans to take Hornby Trains into public ownership as part of its overall renationalisation strategy.

A Downing Street spokesman said space had been made in the Number 10 attic where they could begin running freight and passenger services over different lines. 'The timetable will be flexible to suit our work breaks and there will be minimal maintenance required. Plus the big advantage here over mainline rail companies is we won’t have ASLEF on our backs every five minutes.'

Asked how and when the Hornby acquisition might be made they told us it was already on Labour’s Christmas list to Lord Alli.