Embarrassing things you’ve done while travelling by train

[ChewChewTrain]

Posted in General due to the thread’s frivolous nature. Please move if this is in error.

I’ll start off, naturally. Many moons ago, at Paddington, I was running for my train which was either on P2 or P4. Having got through the ticket barrier, and while running at full pelt, I looked up at that platform’s display to make sure it was the right train.

At that point, I then absolutely clattered into this poor chap, bounced off him, and ended up very much on the ground (and not far from the edge of the platform). Now, I’m a big guy, and was several stone bigger in those days, so I’m very glad my unfortunate victim wasn’t some little old lady, because that could have been bad.

I’m also glad the chap had enough time to realise what was happening and steel himself against the collision before it happened. It was impressive on his part because he wasn’t that large himself. I only wish he’d had time to warn me as well, but you can’t have everything.

He did see the funny side, and I apologised and made my train. (And yes, I know they take the trains off the displays 2 minutes before departure, so one never needs to be running while checking the displays, even if that weren’t a silly idea anyway for the reasons alluded to in this post…)

So, who can top that? Don’t be shy; we’re all friends here…

 

[brad465]

Several years ago on a then-FGW service I got told the music I was playing through my headphones was too loud, from someone who walked down half the length of a HST carriage to tell me this. Suffice to say I never used those particular headphones again.

 

[DerekC]

Going to sleep and overshooting your station must be quite common and I have done it several times, but on one occasion I woke to hear the guard's whistle blowing, saw that the station platform outside the window looked like my destination, grabbed my bag and piled out (it was in slam door days). Only to find (after the train had departed) that I was a couple of stations early. I think the site of my embarrassment was Ravensbourne, but where I was meant to be going I can't recall.

 

[Urobach]

Getting on a train home, telling someone else on the platform who asked if it was going to the same said place that it was, only for it to be diverted as booked and not going where we wanted. That was an awkward journey.

 

[Purple Train]

Finally, a thread made for me...

1) I was conducting a few friends (one of them being frightened of London and the other two having a collective sense of direction equal to roughly 0) across London, as we were all on our way to Colchester. At Liverpool Street, the platform for our train was announced and we went over to the gates. Now, at Liverpool Street, there are two gates leading to the platforms - one normal size, one a disabled gate. My friends filed through the wide gate. I am very pedantic, so I don't use disabled ticket gates, as... they're disabled ticket gates. Anyway, I walked over to the normal gate, nearly knocking someone over, who, understandably (being British) was very unhappy about being queue-jumped. I apologised profusely. I can't remember which gate I retreated shame-facedly through.

2) Later on the same journey, the conductor came through. Now, I was quite apprehensive about it, because the conductor had made a very long-winded announcement beforehand about the validity of split-save tickets. I had just bought my first Section 16.2 split, and wasn't quite sure whether it was still valid, so was particularly anxious that it would turn out to be valid as I didn't want to look like I hadn't listened to him. So, I did what any self-respecting person would do - downloaded the National Rail Conditions of Travel on my phone, found section 16.2, confirmed my split was valid, and presented the relevant passage along with my ticket to the poor conductor. This would have been fine if I hadn't prefaced it with a two-minute ramble, which roughly ran along the lines of this, "I think this is valid the man from the ticket office didn't raise any objections and it said duty manager on his name badge so I think he knew what he was doing I'm sorry if it's not valid please don't fine me but I'm only going back to Harold Wood anyway so I think it's a perfectly valid combination and I did listen to your annou..." cue me tailing off as I saw his eyes glaze over. (Before anyone takes me to task over punctuation, the unpunctuated sentence gives a good idea of how I said it. Even better would have been if I had removed all the spaces.) Fortunately, he just said, "Yeah... yeah that's fine mate..." and moved on swiftly. I have his badge-name permanently etched on my mind so that I can apologise if I see him again!

3) Different journey now. CrossCountry, Reading to Manchester. I have already narrated this tale in condensed format on my Trip Reports thread (self-plug heroically not inserted ) I was travelling with two (different) friends, and we were sitting on a table, which was also occupied by a businessman at work. The opposite side was full of Explorer Scouts, who were making a great deal of noise. We were not making a great deal of noise (well, not compared to them, anyway...) but we were decidedly hyperactive. Aside from inventing a game called Puddle (involving quite some talking, at progressively higher volume), and making fun of the Explorer Scouts (not that they could hear), the only other thing that will have annoyed the businessman will have been my reaction to passing Tyseley Depot, especially given I say numbers out loud as an aide-memoire as I can't write fast enough. That paragraph doesn't sound dreadfully bad, but "hyperactive spotter with a distinct lack of WMR units passing Tyseley Depot", condensed into one sentence like that, does it justice, I think. That makes two people I have an outstanding apology to make to...

4) Not knowing what Monster is. That is, according to a GWR trolley attendant...

5) Losing my balance on a packed EMR 170 while sorting out my luggage and falling backwards into a lady sitting in one of the airline seats. These are not roomy at the best of times, but certainly not when someone falls onto you at a 90-degree angle. Especially if they're wearing a massive rucksack that is easily as wide as the amount of leg-room you get.

6) Having decided not to put my rucksack in the luggage rack (on the out of sight, out of mind principle), I stood in the vestibule (being a young thing with good "railway feet"). Unfortunately, my railway feet are not good enough to withstand both a heavy rucksack and the lively track of the North Staffordshire line, as the gentleman sitting on his suitcase next to me found out to his cost.

7) Somehow ending up in a circle of particularly loud and boisterous American students on the Piccadilly Line. I tried my hardest to give every other passenger a look that said "I'm not a member of this group, I ended up here through no fault of my own, HELP!" but I received no reply. Typical Londoners. Fortunately the students all alighted a few stops later.

8) Seeing two 222s coupled up at St Pancras, but the displays were only showing a five-coach train. I asked a member of staff which coaches to board, and, after rephrasing my question about 83 times, he eventually gave me the answer that if the train was formed of only one unit, the display would be shaded to indicate that. Deeply confused, I went through the barrier, and found that one of the units had gone off ECS before I asked, so no wonder the poor man was confused. That makes three people I have an outstanding apology to make to...

I think I'll stop there, and save the rest for the next time a thread like this comes up!

 

[duncanp]

Going to sleep and overshooting your station must be quite common and I have done it several times, but on one occasion I woke to hear the guard's whistle blowing, saw that the station platform outside the window looked like my destination, grabbed my bag and piled out (it was in slam door days). Only to find (after the train had departed) that I was a couple of stations early. I think the site of my embarrassment was Ravensbourne, but where I was meant to be going I can't recall.

Some years ago when I was working in Sutton (Surrey) I went on a night out in Central London.

Coming back, I woke up at Carshalton (the station before Sutton) and thought "..oh good I'll be home in a minute.."

Next thing I knew was the train pulling into Boxhill & Westhumble.

I hurriedly got off the train, which then departed, and I then realised "...oh $%$£@!!, it's 11:45pm and I'm in the middle of nowhere..".

So I got on the very last train to Dorking, and had to pay £30 for a taxi back to Sutton.

Mind you, not as bad as when I was living in Walthamstow, and got on a Northbound Victoria line train at Kings Cross to go home, and woke up at.....Oxford Circus, meaning I had gone all the way to Walthamstow and back again whilst fast asleep.

 

[75A]

My late Father was travelling to work from Lancing to Brighton, when he realised he had one brown and one black shoe on, luckily for him I was clocking on a couple of hours later and took him a replacement. He said he felt that the whole coach was looking at them for the entire journey.

 

[Trainguy34]

Slightly OT as this was on a bus, but I was on my way home one day and I had been feeling ill for most of that day. This bus had long gaps between stops and I started to feel very ill about 20 seconds after a stop. After one and a half minutes later, I felt like I was about to throw up. I was right. Luckily no-one was sitting in front of me but it did go all over the floor. I then got off at the next stop, dodging the spillage that went onto the floor before apologising profusely to the driver. One of my workmates said that his bus smelt really bad the next morning when I saw him a few days later so I think I know what bus it was...

 

[Bantamzen]

Years ago when living in South Elmsall, I boarded an evening GNER service at Leeds with the view of getting off at Wakefield for a pint. I got up out of my seat as the train approached Westgate and got to the door just in time to see it sail straight through.... I'd forgotten that there was one later in the day that didn't call at Wakefield! So onto Doncaster I went with my West Yorkshire MetroCard waiting for that awkward conversation with the guard. Luckily they didn't get to my carriage and I was able to slink out of Donny and head for a bus home...

 

[birchesgreen]

Nothing too bad, i've got off at the wrong stop a couple of times (most recent time though the guard gave the wrong station out on the PAS so not really fully my fault!)... though luckily realised quickly enough to be able to get back on before the train left!

 

[NeilCr]

Travelling back from Bath to London

I’d reserved a seat as it was a busy service. Found a woman in said seat - we had a polite but firm conversation and she moved. Fortunately there were some spare seats

You guessed it. After five minutes or so I realised she had been right along and I was in the wrong

I owned up, apologised and we moved to our correct places. Very embarrassed though as I’d insisted she was in my seat.

 

[Springs Branch]

The scene is a Mk1 SK (corridor compartment carriage) in the late 1970s or early 80s. It's one of the Class 31-hauled Norwich to Birmingham trains, which used to potter across country every couple of hours.

The train was fairly busy when I joined it at March, but I found a compartment which had four travellers already in situ and two spare seats. All these ensconced passengers were middle-aged 'county types'. They looked like they'd be quite at home in Barbour jackets, green wellies and a couple of wet dogs but were dressed more-or-less in 'civvies' today; they seemed none too pleased about a long-haired, bearded student invading their territory and heaving my large, grubby rucksack onto the overhead luggage rack.

Dirty looks all round, but I sat down anyway, and we took off westwards across the fens.

Around about Peterborough, it was midday so I annoyed them again by retrieving by lunch from the overhead rucksack. On the menu that day was a packaged Sainsburys scotch egg and a can of Ruddles County.

When I'd changed from the Spalding-bound DMU at March, hurrying over the up-and-down steps of the footbridge had obviously jiggled the ale a bit, so cracking the can caused some minor splatter. Eyes were raised, lips were pursed and there was probably a silent tut or two from my reluctant companions, but luckily I was the only one to cop a bit of a beery spray.

Next task was to get the scotch egg out of its cellophane. This turned out a bit tougher than anticipated, so I balanced the open can of Ruddles County on the trojan moquette next to my thigh and gave the wrapper an extra hard tug. It suddenly decided to give way and I knocked the full can of beer over, spilling a lamentable fraction of it onto the seat.

None of the others saw anything funny in this Mr. Bean-style slapstick routine; all glared at me severely and probably though a good dose of National Service was what I needed.

Undeterred, I moved from my soggy, beery seat to the other unoccupied one in the compartment and finished my scotch egg and what was left of my beer.

A little later - must have been at the Oakham or Melton Mowbray stop - another lone male passenger appeared, saw one of the few unoccupied seats on the train in our compartment and quickly and gratefully plonked himself down on it.

No one said anything, but it wasn't long before he started to notice some kind of 'seepage' from the seat cushion. None too discretely, he slipped his fingers down, sniffed them carefully, then looked suspiciously at my empty can of Ruddles County sitting on the little table thingy underneath the carriage window, then at me. I pretended not to notice anything and continued to enjoy the scenery of England's Green and Pleasant Land through the window.

IIRC, the four 'Country Life' characters got out at Leicester without saying a word to me or the unfortunate traveller with the wet trousers. But for most of the journey you could have cut the contempt and frosty atmosphere in the compartment with a knife.

 

[J-2739]

Travelling back from Bath to London

I’d reserved a seat as it was a busy service. Found a woman in said seat - we had a polite but firm conversation and she moved. Fortunately there were some spare seats

You guessed it. After five minutes or so I realised she had been right along and I was in the wrong

I owned up, apologised and we moved to our correct places. Very embarrassed though as I’d insisted she was in my seat.

This one.

 

[McRhu]

Commuting into Glasgow in a very busy class 303 carriage some years ago. A woman further up suddenly turned on the man sitting next to her and hissed - in words of pure cut ice venom - "Don't you ever DARE say that to me again." The entire coach went silent and nobody spoke for at least 30 seconds. I was mortified with embarrasment and I wasn't even involved. I never did find out what he said.

 

[Stormaggeddon]

A chap I know* was visiting his friend in Birmingham in the early 70s and got on the wrong train, heading North East towards Darlington rather than South West towards Bodmin. This was his first real trip away from Cornwall so he was a little concerned. Realising his mistake he struck up a conversation with the two women sat opposite. One was very helpful, caring and helped him to get home. The other mocked him, was a bit rude but he decided to chance his arm a bit and left them both his parents phone number with the long shot “if you’re ever in Cornwall I’ll show you around”. They later married in Shildon in 1975, the helpful lass was the maid of honour.





*I know this as he’s my Dad and the lass is my Mum, I turned up three years later when they’d moved to Plymouth with work.

 

[Huntergreed]

Not so much embarrassing as a rookie error.

I remember my first time travelling long distance by train. Myself and a family member were travelling down to London during the 2014 commonwealth games in Glasgow.

We were at Carlisle station and found the time of our train on what we assumed was the departures board:

11:49 - London Euston - Platform 3

(Those who know Carlisle will know where this is going from that!)

We boarded the train, settled comfortably into our reserved seats and started to roll off.

No ticket check and no announcements for about an hour or so. I remember commenting on how scenic the ride was (as we’d heard the section south of Carlisle (Shap/Lune Gorge) was awfully scenic).

Wasn’t until about Polmadie that we started to realised we’d actually boarded the 11:49 to Glasgow instead of London (now the times are offset by a few minutes to prevent this happening again!)

 

[xotGD]

It's one of the Class 31-hauled Norwich to Birmingham trains

Yes - very embarrassing to own up to traveling behind a 31!

 

[johntea]

Going to sleep and overshooting your station must be quite common and I have done it several times, but on one occasion I woke to hear the guard's whistle blowing, saw that the station platform outside the window looked like my destination, grabbed my bag and piled out (it was in slam door days). Only to find (after the train had departed) that I was a couple of stations early. I think the site of my embarrassment was Ravensbourne, but where I was meant to be going I can't recall.

I remember doing this once on the bus, I had drifted off to sleep (a few beers probably didn't help!) and suddenly woke up, thought we were at the final stop and just got off, only to quickly work out I was only about 5 miles out!

I also booked an advance train to London once, slept in and quickly booked another service when I woke up, all I had to do was get off at Wakefield Kirkgate and get over to Wakefield Westgate...again I drifted off on the journey to Kirkgate (not alcohol related this time, a rough on call overnight shift from work!) and just as I was coming round 'beep beep beep beep beep'...tough luck you're off to Darton instead! I had to give up the trip to London as a bad job at that point and write it off as a rather expensive sleep!

 

[contrex]

7) Somehow ending up in a circle of particularly loud and boisterous American students on the Piccadilly Line. I tried my hardest to give every other passenger a look that said "I'm not a member of this group, I ended up here through no fault of my own, HELP!" but I received no reply. Typical Londoners. Fortunately the students all alighted a few stops later.

I was once on the Circle Line near a family of American tourists. The teenage son thought it would be funny to deliver his impression of the lady on the PA doing the station announcements. For every stop. Think Dick Van Dyke. The others looked a bit embarrassed and eventually the girl of the family spoke up and said to the carriage, 'I'm very sorry that my idiot brother is being so disrespectful to your country'. A cockney geezer type of bloke spoke up and 'Don't worry darling, I thought he was quite funny. Carry on son!'.

 

[ABB125]

My mum fell asleep one evening on the way back home during a short spell commuting to Bristol. She ended up in Birmingham, somewhat further than planned!

My dad has opened a toilet door to find a woman sat in there... This was a wheelchair accessible toilet, so you have to wait for the door to (very slowly) open fully before it will (very slowly) close again. Not ideal!

I left my coat on a class 755 at Norwich, which then went in to Crown Point. Which wouldn't be the end of the world, if not for the fact that my ticket and any means of buying a new one were is said coat pockets! My case trying to retrieve the coat involved going through the barriers, which basically didn't happen until I'd sat doing nothing for over half an hour, was not helped by the fact that this was one of the hottest das of the year...

 

[Purple Train]

I left my coat on a class 755 at Norwich, which then went in to Crown Point. Which wouldn't be the end of the world, if not for the fact that my ticket and any means of buying a new one were is said coat pockets! My case trying to retrieve the coat involved going through the barriers, which basically didn't happen until I'd sat doing nothing for over half an hour, was not helped by the fact that this was one of the hottest das of the year...

Well at least you didn't have a coat on to boil you...

 

[Bayum]

Was booked in for an overnight stay at the hospital after some ‘simple’ surgery that day with my train booked the following Wednesday evening… except I managed to haemorrhage overnight and required two bags of blood. Suffice to say, I didn’t go home on Wednesday and was told Thursday I’d be ready for discharge so I needed to book my train tickets that day so one of the financiers at the hospital could refund my two train tickets. Booked the train. Got my refund. Got to Kings X. Was confused by my train ticket but was so out of it I couldn’t work out why so ended up collapsing in front of the guard in floods of tears giving this whole sob story about everything that had happened and I just wanted to go home. Pretty much picked me up (I’m only 5ft 3), put me in a seat in the unreserved carriage even though I’d protested that I had a reserved seat. We’d just passed through Doncaster and he came to see how I was and told me he didn’t have the heart to tell me in London that my train ticket was booked for the previous day.

TLDR: had to recount an embarrassing medical episode, be taken onto the train and put in a seat and then told I’d booked train tickets for the previous day. Safe to say, the TOC had some complimentary emails over the following few weeks.

 

[DM352]

Adjusting the heater on a late night Tyseley 4 car unit empty trailer and warm smoke started entering the carriage. Decided restoring back to the colder setting was more healthy.

 

[Cowley]

Sat on a busy Pacer as an 18 year old between Manchester and Liverpool on an all line rover one day in 1991 when two (not unattractive) girls started giggling and then commenced singing “He’s a long haired lover from ah Liverpoool…” at me from a few seats away. The other passengers were chuckling and I was absolutely beetroot red!

(I did have long hair but I wasn’t from Liverpool )

 

[zero]

Embarrassing to me was when I've had RTT/Traksy open and knew what I was meant to do, but didn't believe in myself and got the wrong train in a panic.

Once I had to do a 1 hour walk at 1am instead of getting home at midnight - there were two trains to the same destination with different stopping patterns on opposite platforms, the running order changed so they came at the same time (others may have made that mistake too but I had the correct info on my phone and just didn't follow it).

Another time I messed up a meticulously planned 3-in-7 rover on the first afternoon. I got to a platform early and convinced myself that the train there was the train I wanted, when I actually needed the next one in 2 minutes. I had gone through all permutations of trains and my plan was the only way to achieve everything in 3 days, otherwise the 7 day rover would have been cheaper even for 3.5 days of travel. Perhaps I shouldn't have checked, but all the trains on my original plan ran on time.

 

[Blindtraveler]

1. When someone from the neighboring and rather posh girls school to the not nearly so posh one that you attended but that you had had a short and slightly into it but not the full thing relationship with back when you are 15 or 16 turns up as a senior conductor on your train at the other end of the country and worse still you have a complex ticketing issue that you really need her to sort out

2. When a smart suited and slightly drunk business person recognizes you as the function DJ that did his mates stag do and with which he wasn't happy with the choice of music and chooses to tell the entire train of it very loudly

3. Unplanned and therefore not easily preventable and rather pungent Gough problems on a crowded service

4. When passenger assist fall down on the job and put you on the wrong train and the guard decides that it's your fault and has a go at you in a very loud voice and threatens to call the btp

5. The time when an emergency stop sent me not quite flying but certainly staggering into the trolley dolly on across country voyager and I ended up rather closer to her than intended and with one hand somewhere that it definitely shouldn't have been the. Thankfully she was a divorcey in her late 30s and was flattered at the attention
6. Pronunciation or lack thereof of various Scottish and Welsh station names which no doubt Rail staff are used to but there's always some smart Alec sitting two rows back that either wets themselves laughing or corrects you in a very supercilious way

 

[ls2270]

Going to sleep and overshooting your station must be quite common and I have done it several times, but on one occasion I woke to hear the guard's whistle blowing, saw that the station platform outside the window looked like my destination, grabbed my bag and piled out (it was in slam door days). Only to find (after the train had departed) that I was a couple of stations early. I think the site of my embarrassment was Ravensbourne, but where I was meant to be going I can't recall.

I would take a guess that you might have been going to Crofton Park. Ravensbourne was my local station for over 30 years and on numerous occasions I woke up in a panic on trains from London thinking I was at Ravensbourne when it was in fact Crofton Park… they look very similar especially at the London end!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Does attempting to open the barrier to Thameslink at St Pancras with a Navigo pass after spending a few days in Paris count...?

 

[chipbury]

Leaving Paddington on a late train planning to change at Swindon for Bath - then waking up to the rumble of the train crossing the bridge before Newport station!

I think it cost me £50 in a taxi to get home.

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

Tripping and falling on those death-trap ramps on the Class 745, multiple times - particularly the ones like Mount Everest adjacent to the motor "cupboard room" in the centre of the train.