Nationalised Express

Lord Adonis, the mythical god of transport, has announced that he will be taking direct control of the East Coast rail franchise, and is furiously trying to wrestle current operator Hornby Express away from a transformer with a big knob on the front.

As an ageing toy InterCity 125 grinds intermittently round the oval track - labouring under the weight of dozens of successive coats of paint, and emitting sparks from its rusty wheels - a glistening Lord Adonis put the franchisee in a headlock and told reporters that he was also seeking to take control of the railcars and puffing billies of Hornby Express' other franchises, East Anglia and c2c.

However, the purple-faced operator gasped that the East Coast franchise was in fact run by a completely separate Special Purpose Vehicle, set up under the relevant Department for Transport rules in order to provide the parent company with minimal financial liability and legal responsibility, and warned that if Lord Adonis tried to take any of its sister companies' rolling stock out of their sidings he would be up in front of the fat cat controller.

"You can keep your manky old East Coast line anyway," it huffed angrily as it broke free. "There's a dead connection in the tunnel, so you have to poke the train out with a ruler - and the curves still aren't nailed down, so if you take them at any sort of speed the track comes apart, the train falls off the table and the cat goes shooting up the curtains out of fright."

Lord Adonis carefully rearranged his flowing locks and pranced out of the attic to design what he promised would be "a dynamic new colour scheme fit for the train operating companies of the 21st century". Meanwhile the untended model train jumped the buffers at Edinburgh Waverley Station, sending sections of platform skidding across the bare board.

"I just want a train that goes as fast as they used to in the days of steam, arrives roughly when it's supposed to and doesn't require a sodding mortgage for the privilege of being wedged into cattle class with an intimate view of somebody else's dandruff," said one long-suffering passenger as he sat patiently on a platform bench." Or is that too much to ask?"

"I'd much sooner travel by Scalextric any day," he added crossly, "But some bastard appears to have glued me to my seat."

He was then eaten by the cat.