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Crystal Palace Offer Fans Opportunity To Ride A Vintage Steam Train With Alan Pardew

Crystal Palace fans can choo-choo-choose to ride a train to their final league match of the season, with Pards and the lads joining them for the return trip.
Credit: Peter Powell/EPA

As you approach the vintage steam train, its lacquered black carapace glinting in the sun, you allow the warm nostalgia to wash over you. This vehicle, this mighty locomotive, is a memento of Britain's industrial heritage, a vestige of a time when your great-grandad worked the railways, stoked engines and got two lungfuls of good, healthy coal for his troubles. The steam train is a reminder of hard labour, economic promise and working-class struggle. That is why you, avid steam train enthusiast, have come to pay homage to this emblem of a bygone age.

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You approach the front of the train, fondly running your hand along its smooth, metal surface. You share a moment with the steam train, a few seconds of solitary reflection. Suddenly, out of the window of the driver's cab, a familiar face bursts forth and leers at you with a laddish grin. It is Alan Pardew, and he is wearing a peaked cap in Crystal Palace colours. "Honk honk" he whispers suggestively, before yanking down on a pull cord and sending a plume of hot steam screaming toward the sky.

You awaken, drenched in a cold sweat. Pardew is gone, but the sound of his haunting laughter remains.

This may sound like a Freudian dreamscape but, believe it or not, it bears fairly close resemblance to reality. In a surreal twist to their otherwise ordinary season, Crystal Palace have announced that fans will be able to travel to and from their away game against Southampton via vintage steam train – and that Alan Pardew will be present for at least some of the journey.

Palace co-owner Jeremy Hoskin is "a prominent collector of vintage steam trains", according to the club's website. We're not sure exactly how many steam trains you have to own before you become a prominent collector, but we're assuming it is quite a lot. Whatever the precise number, the fact is that he owns a recently restored post-war locomotive called "Lord Dowding". Hoskin is organising the outing to Southampton to mark the Eagles' final match of the season, with an adult match ticket, refreshments and the cost of the two-way train journey all included for a generous £242. For the return trip, Pardew and the squad will join the fans on board.

Can you imagine the scenes when Pardew boards the train? Can you imagine the absolute banter? Pardew, asking fans to feel his tensed bicep. Pardew, inviting fans to compare abs. Pardew, trying to break the world record for how many lager tops a man can drink in one afternoon. Pardew, stealing people's dinners and referring to himself as "the king" at every given opportunity. It will be hellish, the stuff of nightmares.

Perhaps the most unlikely element of this story is that tickets for the steam train are now sold out. Among Crystal Palace fans, there is massive popular demand for train journeys with Alan Pardew. He'll probably find that locomotive commitments have been written into his next contract, making it a legal obligation for him to drive the Crystal Palace steam train to every away match of 2016/17. As a weary Pardew stokes more coal on to the insatiable fires of the engine, face begrimed with soot, he may well rue the day he agreed to board the Southampton steam train. Either that, or he'll just keep snarfling people's dinners and having a grand old time.