Sellotape and trains

Much artificial outrage in the tabs today at a train driver who asked his passengers for sticky tape to fix his train. What is the world coming to, is the Mail’s view.

Of course, aficionados of the Thomas the Tank Engine oeuvre, as my son and I are, will remember that James’s driver used one Mr Jobling’s bootlace to repair a brake pipe after James had treated his carriages roughly one day. “The passengers told the Driver, the Fireman and the Guard what a Bad Railway it was,” wrote W. Awdry in 1948.

Well, indeed. Even now.