I was once, back in about 1980, on a train which had to reverse because the driver had accepted a wrong route. Just a bit of background information. On at least two occasions I had to travel home from Leeds to Birmingham on a Sunday afternoon. Rail Enquires assured me that there were not any trains on Sunday afternoons before about 5.00pm. Anyway during the week before, I went into a Thomas Cook office to buy my tickets. They told me that there was a train from Leeds to Sheffield at about 2.30pm where I could change to a Birmingham train. I presented at the barrier at Leeds and was challenged as there was no train to Birmingham. I explained that when I bought my ticket I was told that I could travel on the Sheffield train. With some reluctance I was allowed through the barrier (I had the same discussion on a further occasion a few years later).
This is the story I was told by the guard when he came round checking on passengers who had onward connections at Sheffield. All week they had been told that on Sunday the service would be diverted because of engineering work. However both the driver and the guard, when they signed on that day had been told that they were to work the normal route. The driver therefore accepted the signals for the normal route until he came to a stop signal. When he phoned through to check, according to how the guard told the story, the signaller's response was 'What the Hell are you doing there? There is a possession ahead of your signal'. We had to reverse back to Wakefield.
