The New Owners

No passengers are permitted on the northbound newspaper train leaving London's grimy King's Cross station each morning at 2:34 a.m. But 15 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave one morning a man climbed aboard it and settled himself in a car reserved for railroad employees. "No passengers," said a ticket collector. The traveler refused to budge. The ticket collector fetched a guard. The traveler refused to budge. The guard fetched an assistant stationmaster.

"The railways are nationalized. They belong to me and to everyone!" shouted the would-be passenger. "I can do as I like now."

The three harassed officials tried in vain to pull the traveler from the luggage rack to which he clung. At last, the carriage was uncoupled and shunted into a tunnel. There, in complete darkness, the adamantine passenger sulked and fumed. Not until the railway officials threatened to shunt his car onto a siding permanently did he finally consent to leave the train and wait for the regular 4:25 to Grantham.

Another Briton felt that nationalization entitled her to ask a favor of the engineer on the 6:20 from Hastings to Ashford. "Would you be so good as to hoot as you go over the iron bridge just out of Rye station," she wrote,"to get my husband up for work? We cannot buy an alarm clock.

"P.S. My husband says 'not too loud,' but I say 'blow like blazes!' "

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