And ambulances regularly broke down.
It was also aging fast, with escalators and elevators regularly breaking down.
On one level this incoherence is a good thing, as is the fact that even within the far right, alliances have regularly broken down.
Just 65percentt of weekday trains reach their destinations on time, the lowest rate since the transit crisis of the 1970s, when graffiti-covered cars regularly broke down.
In reality, there are fewer working centrifuges this year than there were last, because the original Pakistani design is inherently faulty and machines regularly break down.
Giving her evidence in chief at their trial, she regularly broke down in tears; her mouth wide open in a silent scream and her shoulders shaking as the tears poured down her face.
The city, which relies on 40-year-old voting machines that regularly break down and where other polling glitches are routine, is not about to see election reform or new voting technology any time soon.
Father Bernard, who will return to Bossemptele in January, freely admits that he regularly broke down in tears in the privacy of his room during the darkest days of a conflict which he is anxious to underline is by no means over.
Instead of across-the-board public service cuts (whether 7% or 10%), cut the big hugely costly projects which clearly cannot now be afforded (and were not fit for purpose anyway) – Trident replacement, ID cards, and massive government IT schemes that regularly break down and often leak disastrously – and for the rest cast the burden where it can most equitably be shouldered.
Sunderland - on a run of five wins in eight games - could not get the ball off the visitors, although the Swans' slick interchange passing regularly broke down against a Black Cats defence that had kept three clean sheets in their previous four home games.
