Harry
Potter has taken on all manner of
monsters and magicians, but his
latest enemy is a gang of graffiti
taggers, the aptly named Slobs.
That's the name found sprayed on
the side of the real-life train
that appears in the ''Potter''
movies as the Hogwarts Express.
According to England's The Sun
tabloid, the vandalizing Muggles
covered entire sides of two
carriages with silver and green
paint on Wednesday night while the
famous steam engine was parked in
a railyard. The taggers were
spotted before they could finish
the job and dispersed without
getting caught. Said one railway
worker: ''It’s just a shame
Harry is not around at the moment
to turn them into frogs.''
When
it's not stopping at the imaginary
Platform 9 3/4 at London's Kings
Cross station to whisk the student
wizards off to school, the steam
engine has a day job, shuttling
summer tourists between York and
the seaside resort of Scarborough.
The vandalism, which will cost an
estimated $5,000 to clean up, ''is
heartbreaking and has made me and
the rest of the staff very
angry,'' said James Shuttleworth,
of the West Coast Railway Company,
which operates the train. ''The
people who did this are mindless
toerags. This will horrify the
millions of Harry Potter fans.''
We don't know what ''mindless
toerags'' means, but it sounds
like a curse worthy of an angry
wizard.
