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Comment by tomblomfield | Hacker News Reader

I've taken this route a couple of times - the Caledonian sleeper. I had this romantic vision of linen tablecloths and breakfast in bed.

Instead, I got instant coffee and a single croissant served in a vacuum-packed plastic wrapper.

One time, the train even ended up in a Glasgow by mistake.

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Croissant! Lucky soul. They had supply problems when I went on it. We had Fosters and microwaved burger for breakfast. Not a great start to the day.

It became apparent at about 11AM that the burger was poison and tried (unsuccessfully I will add) to escape both ends. Sorry if that was too much information.

Oh, we'd have killed for Fosters. All we got was half a cup of brake fluid, and if we said anything the engine driver would stop the train "until everyone was quiet". Then we took a wrong turn at Crewe and ended up in Archangelsk twelve days later with beriberi.

Was is 12? Seemed like 13.

At least the brake fluid was fresh.

I had a window seat, but all I could see was despair. Turns out it was my reflection.

The small lady in the paper hat was nice, but she ran out of cookies before she got to me.

Cookies? Ridiculous! They fed us burning hot coal, then forced us to pull the train while the driver sat up front and whipped us. And we had to pay train driver to let us pull!

Poisoned burger? Luxury. We were served dingy water reclaimed from the train radiator and a pigeon what had flown against a window and died, and told to fend for ourselves. At night a drunken conductor would thrash us all to sleep with a broken bottle of Glenfiddich, shouting various slurs.

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