The railway boys

So it is as we get older that we get less patient with people doing dumb things on the internet and one of the things that has got my ire at the moment is the comments in a railway Facebook group I belong to. Now I love an old railway, railway infrastructure, bits of old architecture, and all that, and so do lots of other people.

But.

I’m in this group where people post pics of disused railways and whatnot and it is great except that for every picture without fail someone will post underneath it “It’s terrible what they done to the railways” or something to that effect. Then someone will post “They should re-open this line, it would provide vital local links from [place A with a tiny population] to [place B with a tiny population]” then someone will post “They can’t re-open the line because they did a survey and it would cost seven quintillion pounds plus also they’ve built flats over half the route.”

Every single post.

We know it was terrible what they done to the railways, that’s why we are here. We know it is uneconomic to open rural routes, because that’s why they all got shut in the first place in a country that loves roads and cars and doesn’t see subsidising public transport infrastructure as a net common good, just sees it as a drain on the taxpayer or a failure to make enough profit.

Every damn post.

Like being in a group dedicated to The Fall and under every post someone posting “I like The Fall. It’s a shame Mark E Smith died. I bet they would have released some new albums by now”.

We know.

SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. LADS.