Description
Audio clip from interview with Mr. Ber Angley, former Entertainment Manager for the NIHE/UL Student's Union. Interview conducted on 19th January 2022 by Dr. Martin Walsh.
"So, one of the other things ah Chris kind of came up, well both myself and Chris really came up with it. But ah Chris came up with the location because Chris was from Ennis at the time and ah came up with this great idea ah that we’d hire trains and of course, I be always up for an aul challenge and it was, it involved a bit of craic for the students, great. Ah, bit nightmare, ah, so we hired, we went to Irish Rail they agreed, they hired us a train, our first trip was to Ennis. I decided that I would do the Ennis side of the venue, that means I, I’d look after the venue so it was ah, aw, I can’t remember the name of the venue, ah, but I would look after that side so I’m basically at that side and Chris was on the train. There was no mobile phones - what we didn’t ah, know, because we never did it before was there was a thing called a chord and the students who were quite drunk, I must say, were pulling the chord and the train was taking…So I’m in the station and I’m getting really worried and whatever your man in the station kept on saying “ah well there’s a problem you know, I think there could be an accident now” and I was thinking “Oh Jesus, oh no, no” all I was thinking “no, they can’t be”. But of course, eventually, the train did come in and they were all, all…and that was our first train trip. And we did many of those, and it was kind of a mad idea, and, and we did those over the years. It was particularly in rag week you know but we did them outside of rag week. So, we kind of went to Galway, ah, Cork we even went to Tralee ah, we went to, did we go, we went to Mallow, yeah, we went to Mallow yeah. I think ah, I think the Guard’s response was, I think they didn’t know it was coming, I think you’re supposed to tell them, but I didn’t know that at the time and ah, you know, you put maybe, we…well 800 students suddenly arrive into a small town like Mallow and I remember the guard says “Ah, what are ye doing and ye have yere own police as well” because we had crew (laughs) but we, we did."
-Interview excerpt
