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gerald_duck December 30 2016, 23:15:22 UTC
Wow!

Any idea if the story is authentic? The prose style is a little overblown, and the site feels a little bit clickbaity. And what kind of idiot designs an electrical circuit without any kind of over-current protection?

More to the point, the photo is of a 16A socket. If they only wanted people plugging in phone chargers, why didn't they provide 2.5A Europlug sockets instead?

If it's true, I wonder what they can do about it now? Once the problem's widely known, there will be pranksters wandering around with hairdryers, deliberately causing disruption.

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_nicolai_ December 30 2016, 23:45:00 UTC
Perhaps it's used by cleaning staff; that's usually why rail carriages have one or two power sockets. Some have many more for customer use, but even quite old trains have one or two sockets for staff use. If so, 2.5A could be insufficient; a commercial vacuum cleaner could have a 1KW motor.

I don't have an independent check on the veracity of the story.

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gerald_duck December 31 2016, 01:16:50 UTC
Googling suggests industrial vacuum cleaners tend to be 1.2kW, whereas raclette ovens are usually… 1.2kW.

So it would be strange for a raclette oven to cause trouble in a socket intended for hoovering.

In the UK, sockets on public transport not intended for public use tend to use Walsall Gauge so such mishaps can't occur.

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deliberateblank December 31 2016, 05:59:01 UTC
The (as they are now) Virgin East Coast trains have a sign on the (customer use) power sockets saying "This outlet is for phones and laptops. Please, no hair-dryers or toasters ( ... )

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knell December 31 2016, 16:45:05 UTC
Does look a little like bollocks to me. Worst case is that it'd pop a breaker somewhere, not that it would kill the entire train.

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