Orchestra is hired to stop people leaving stuff on trains
mainFrom the RPO’s PR:
Commuters across the country leave over 38 million items of lost property on trains every year, as a new list of 10 weird and wonderful ‘forgotten items’ is revealed by East Midlands Trains.
Equating to a staggering £906 million worth of property across the UK, the list of items left behind on East Midlands Trains services includes four pieces of priceless art, two seven-foot surfboards, a life-size cut out of US president Donald Trump, a pork chop, bag of condoms, a 6ft inflatable cactus plant and enough instruments (45) to deck out half a symphony orchestra.
To highlight the amount of property left behind, East Midlands Trains, which is part of Stagecoach Group, has partnered with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra to create the Lost Property Orchestra, a one-off performance of a personalised ode to former owners using the real instruments and more unusual items they left behind in a bid to reunite them.
More common items left behind in the last year include 766 backpacks, 644 coats, 683 mobile phones, 593 wallets and nearly 400 umbrellas.
East Midlands Trains – “Lost in Music” from Tin Man on Vimeo.
I’m reminded of this Japanese poster lamenting the large number of umbrellas left behind each year on the Tokyo subway.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/c9/ba/a1c9bab2efcd4e4958b42c0185e851c7.jpg
I left my wool scarf on a train from Prague to Brno last week because a train conductor shooed me out of a compartment reserved for workmen, and he wouldn’t let me back in to retrieve it after I realized I’d left it there. I got it in Nepal on the trip that I proposed to my wife 25 years ago. Just another lost item.