Sitting on the train to Windsor & Eton Riverside on Thursday, coming
up to Ashford I think, and music starts coming over the PA system
fairly loud. Some fairly recent pop music, fairly unusual occurance
on a train! This continues for 2 tracks or so, punctuated by what
sounds like the odd swearword shouted by some kid. Train stops at
Ashford for a while and the guard announces that it's the school
holidays and some kids are tampering with the PA system and apologises
for the noise and the swearwords and says the police will be joining
the train at the next stop.

Strangely though, he doesnt seem to be able to stop the noise/music,
and it continues until Staines where a load of kids leave the train
from a few carriages down.

At first I thought they had just managed to break into one of the
cabinets and activate the PA, but the guard didn't seem to be able to
find the cause otherwise he would have been able to stop the problems.
The train was stopped for quite a while at Ashford while the guard and
the driver tried to hunt down the offenders, but the problems
continued after the train had set off again.

So given they couldn't stop it, could it be that one of these kids had
an iTrip device or similar which allows you to broadcast on FM,
intended for use with car radios, and interfered with the PA system in
this way? This was the theory the girl sitting opposite put forward.
Possible?

They pulled the alarm at Staines before they dashed off, which delayed
the train even further.

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