TRAINS in Britain may be halted because of leaves on the track or the wrong
kind of snow, but surely nothing like that could interrupt the clockwork
precision of Japanese railways, could it?
Well, yes, it could. According to a report in the Yomiuri newspaper,
an express train north of Tokyo was brought to a halt last week when “clusters
of millipedes” tried to cross a 300-metre section of track. The train “squashed
out their bodily fluids, which apparently acted as a lubricant, making the
wheels slip”, the paper says. It took two and a half hours to resume services…
