No, the SW R in the picture doesn’t stand for SWans on the Railroad; it’s Britain’s South Western Railway, and its trains were disrupted for two days in a row last week by, well, swans on the railroad.
On Wednesday, and again on Thursday, at two different locations, the railroad delayed and canceled trains because of a ‘swan on the line,’ which one wit posted on line was ‘cygnet failure.’ Although both incidents were in the same area southeast of the city, officials don’t believe it was the same swan both times.
Animals have held up railway service in a number of other places over the past year, including in the Netherlands where badgers undermined tracks in one area and storks building nests on signal poles cause disruptions in another. In the UK, last year, a huge injured tortoise on the tracks in Norfolk caused delays while it was removed.
