Your train journey 'fails'

[krus_aragon]

I've only overslept once, and my wife overslept right next to me. Thankfully we were only over-carried one stop from Colwyn Bay to Llandudno Junction, but it meant that we needed a taxi home instead of a short walk.

---

On another occasion, I'd gone to London for a day out with two friends, and we'd booked advance tickets with Wrexham and Shropshire: they offered a 16-25 discount on their first class advances (with catering), which was easily preferable to eating out in London itself, and not much more expensive. The tickets were e-tickets in the form of a QR barcode image attached to an e-mail. Naturally my phone was out of power by the time we got to Marylebone, but thankfully I'd sent a copy of the barcode to one of my friends earlier in the day.

The journey north was very pleasant (even in their original unrefurbished carriages), and the three course meal was thoroughly enjoyable. Our itinerary was WSMR all the way to Wrexham, a connecting train to Chester, and then the last train of the night down the coast. The connecting train was following us up from Shrewsbury, so we hopped off the terminating service at Wrexham, walked over to platform 2, and watched the WSMR train shunt to the sidings while we waited.

A short delay to the Chester service grew larger and larger on the notice board. Station staff were long since gone for the night (as far as I could see) and our connection in Chester was looking very marginal. One member of our group was only going as far as Chester, but the rest of us were facing a long taxi journey back home: not the best end to a day out. In the meantime, the WSMR driver, walking past on the opposite platform, called out to us, pointing out the delay. He then offered us a lift up to Chester on his way home! We eagerly accepted, and rushed over the bridge to meet him. He drove us to Chester station and dropped us off in ample time to make our connection, with the missing train eventually trundling in half an hour late, long after we'd left.

Not quite a fail, but a double close call, and a very good story in spite of it!

 

[duffield]

Many years ago as a trainee for British Rail I was sent on a training course, told to report to Rail House at 0900 and given a go-anywhere day ticket (Edmunson type). Turned up at Darlington, came out of the station and thought "Isn't Rail House right next to the station?". Realized then I was supposed to be in Crewe...

Much laughter when I finally made it to Crewe hours later.

I still don't know how I came to get Darlington in my head that day...

 

[Parallel]

I used my railcard the day after it expired without realising. I was on the Severn Beach branch. The ticket examiner pointed it out and I was shocked that I’d missed it and apologised. What was odd was he took my railcard and left me with my discounted ticket. A few stops later I asked him what I can now do as I’ve only got a discounted ticket and nothing to go with it. He then said he’d sell me an excess for the difference between an off peak fare with and without a railcard.

If I hadn’t been a savvy passenger, I would’ve got onto my next train at Bristol with just a discounted (invalid) ticket and nothing else. Thankfully I approached him to resolve it.

I also make sure I always check the date of my railcard when it is close to expiring now.

 

[mm333]

I have evidence that your brain is always listening when you're asleep. I was coming overnight from Ireland. IE from Waterford-Rosslare (which dates it somewhat), the ferry to Fishguard, Fishguard-Swansea, half-an-hour at Swansea from 3.30-4 in the morning. On to London-bound HST and set an alarm to wake me before Bristol Parkway, and then another alarm to wake me before my XC train gets into Leeds.

So I'm fast asleep while we're at Sheffield and my brain hears an announcement that "this train is today not going via Leeds and the next station to York". I somehow manage to yank myself awake, grab my luggage, get off the train and find a crowded Northern service where I had to stand, sleep-deprieved, for an hour back to Leeds. That was a horrific end to a lovely holiday.

 

[mm333]

A fail followed by a win. I left a carrier bag (a present I bought for a friend) on the luggage rack of the 2030 KGX-LDS but it wasn't until I got home that I realised it. In those days, the unit spent the night in platform 1 at Leeds before going off to be the ECS and then the 0630 Bradford Forster Square-KGX service. So I got up early and went back to Leeds station, boarded the service as it arrived in Leeds ready to reverse, found the bag and got off and went home very relieved.

 

[londonbridge]

Posted before but I once finished work at Kingston and found my train home delayed, boarded it when it arrived having somehow completely missed the announcement that it was now running non stop to Waterloo and passengers for intermediate stations (I wanted Clapham Junction).

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

In 2017 I was in London staying at a hotel in Croydon during the time when the fast Thameslink trains from East Croydon went via Herne Hill etc. instead of London Bridge. One day I wanted go back from Regent's Park to East Croydon and I thought "oh, I can just take the Bakerloo line to Elephant & Castle and take a Thameslink train from there". Well you can guess what happened when I arrived at Elephant & Castle, the only southbound Thameslink trains were for Sutton, Orpington and Sevenoaks. I thought at least some of the Croydon trains would stop there, but they didn't. At least I did get the chance to travel on a class 313 for the first and probably last time, while travelling to Blackfriars.

Also, in Czechia in 2016, I had visited the national railway museum in Lužná u Rakovníka, when services were withdrawn between Kladno and Rakovník because of engineering works. On the way back to Prague I wanted to go via Beroun so took the bus to Rakovník and had looked up that the next train to Beroun was supposed to leave almost immediately, so got on the first train in the station. But as the conductor told me, the train wasn't actually going to Beroun, but to Bečov nad Teplou. Had to get out at a small stop on the outskirts of Rakovník (Rakovník západ) and take the next train back to the main station and also pay for a new ticket (but it was just a few korunas). I'm still not sure what I did wrong but I think the connecting train services also ran to different timetables because of the engineering works on the main line.

 

[route101]

Strangest one I ever had was boarding a 156 at Glasgow Central, platform end screen and train destination showing Whifflet. Something mumbled over the PA as the train starts to fill & departs. Train reaches Eglinton Street and instead of turning left onto the WCML towards Polmadie, it goes straight on up the hill towards Pollokshields. Go find the guard, "I take it this isn't going to Whifflet?" "No, it got cancelled & it's going to Kilmarnock" Me & another passenger ended up in a taxi home from Barrhead - at that point in time Scotrail control used to steal stock from the Whifflet route to fill in for failures on the other south-side lines, on this occasion it must have been a Killie train that failed.

Reminds me when people got the EK and Barrhead services mixed up if on same platform .

 

[MotCO]

In the meantime, the WSMR driver, walking past on the opposite platform, called out to us, pointing out the delay. He then offered us a lift up to Chester on his way home! We eagerly accepted, and rushed over the bridge to meet him. He drove us to Chester station and dropped us off in ample time to make our connection, with the missing train eventually trundling in half an hour late, long after we'd left.

This reminds me of the story (or urban myth) that when Pete Waterman lent his train to be filmed in Harry Potter, and the end of the day's filming, Waterman wanted to return home. However, the last train had gone, so he just used his own train to get home.

 

[47403]

Not me but a good mate of mine, was travelling home from a footy match in London, he'd obviously been to the match, went out into town with his mates, went clubbing and got into his hotel room around 5am, at 10.30am he and his mates were out the hotel and he was feeling particularly rough. His mates, ribbing him in the process, however they left the train back to Newcastle, at Darlington n Durham, they said their goodbyes but he was half asleep as they did so. About an hour or so later he was woken by the guard announcing, Good afternoon to those who've got on at Berwick this is x train to Edinburgh Waverley etc. A single back to Newcastle cost him about 40 quid and us taking the p**s for a good week.

 

[Desiro360]

Once my dad and me were going to Baker St from Liverpool St on the London Underground. To do this we planned to use the Metropolitan Line. We accidentally went to the eastbound platform instead of the westbound platform at Liverpool St Metropolitan Line Station. An A Stock train arrived and both of us got on wondering why the train was so empty. The answer was revealed when the A Stock train we were on arrived at Aldgate Station to terminate. This resulted in a short unplanned wait at Aldgate Station before we got on the next westbound Metropolitan Line train. We could have got on the next westbound Hammersmith & City or Circle Line train which would have been a C Stock train back then. However as my Dad and I liked the comfortable seats on the A Stock trains we were happy to wait for the next westbound Metropolitan Line train from Aldgate Station which we travelled on to Baker St Station. An event I still remember well.

 

[noddy1878]

I've had a few fails. The most notable one was earlier this year when I was on the XC back from Bristol to Plymouth. I'd been up there with a mate having a bit of a catch up and beer drinking session. I thought I was fine on the train home. I'd cracked open another couple of cans and was still awake as we passed through Ivybridge. The next thing I knew we were in Plymouth. The only problem for me was we'd stopped and we on the move again! My phone started ringing and it was an angry wife wondering where I was. She was waiting for me in the car!

Liskeard was the next stop and the next train back was a 90 minute wait. It was also during the Beast from the East, was snowing and the waiting room was shut! I offered to wait and then walk home from the station but she got angry and said she'd have to come and pick me up as it was about -6!

 

[EssexGonzo]

Does falling asleep on the last Liverpool Street - Southend Victoria service and missing my stop at Seven Kings count as a "failed" journey?

It most certainly does.

I'll substitute Shenfield for Seven Kings and raise you a £60 taxi at 1am home from Southend Vic.

 

[telstarbox]

Arrive at Tonbridge, monitor said next train was calling at Paddock Wood. Got on train. Onboard PA muffled and unintelligible. Gets up from seat approaching Paddock Wood and noticed train wasn't slowing down, whizzed through station and didn't stop until Ashford. Can only think that the page I saw on monitor was the second page. Had to get train back from Ashford to Paddock Wood, costing me about an hour. On plus side, didn't get copped for the excess and added a few yards of virgin track (Down Through line at Paddock Wood).

I did exactly the same once in my school days when some (but not all!) of the down trains used to split at Tonbridge, with the front 4 going fast to Ashford and the rear 4 all stations. Luckily the staff at Ashford were understanding and let me go back to Staplehurst.

 

[47403]

I've had a few fails. The most notable one was earlier this year when I was on the XC back from Bristol to Plymouth. I'd been up there with a mate having a bit of a catch up and beer drinking session. I thought I was fine on the train home. I'd cracked open another couple of cans and was still awake as we passed through Ivybridge. The next thing I knew we were in Plymouth. The only problem for me was we'd stopped and we on the move again! My phone started ringing and it was an angry wife wondering where I was. She was waiting for me in the car!

Liskeard was the next stop and the next train back was a 90 minute wait. It was also during the Beast from the East, was snowing and the waiting room was shut! I offered to wait and then walk home from the station but she got angry and said she'd have to come and pick me up as it was about -6!

Your lucky. Had I still been with my ex, she wouldve let me freeze.

 

[paddington]

I left my card in a TVM after collecting about 10 sets of tickets. As you do, between each booking reference, I just pulled the card out of the slot a little then pushed it back in, but after the last set of tickets I obviously just checked all the tickets and walked away leaving the card there.

Not realising that I had lost the card, I booked some more expensive tickets (think London to Scotland) then had to spend a lot of time on the phone getting them to be changed to any card collection.

 

[Kite159]

Biggest fail for me must have been last year when I was staying in Croydon overnight with an early start on the Saturday morning (06:00-odd Glasgow service from Euston), all was going well on the Friday night as I drifted across London until around 9pm when for some unknown reason I wanted to double check the timing of the train, only to find I had left the advance tickets at home. It was too late to head home, pick up the tickets & drive to Basingstoke for the final London train.

And instead of doing the sensible thing and stay in London the following day I wasted ~£80 on an off-peak return to Warrington where my Freedom of the North West rover came into play.

 

[infobleep]

I once got on a train an hour earlier than I should. Guard never said anything fortunately and I think I kept quiet.

I would have waited had not made the mistake.

Another time I was on a train heading to Woking. A lady was on the phone saying apologies I'm on a train to Woking and I'll need to head back to Guildford to pick up a train to Wokinghsm. Wouldn't like to say how long that delayed them, with just two trains an hour to Wokinghsm.

 

[krus_aragon]

I once got on a train an hour earlier than I should. Guard never said anything fortunately and I think I kept quiet.

That's something I've done, too. A few years back, on a Sunday, (hourly) Cardiff-Manchester services arrived at Crewe seven minutes before the (hourly) train for Holyhead departed. Crewe's minimum connection time is ten minutes, so through advance tickets give you a 67 minute wait, even though with no bridge to cross (for this change) it's easily done in five.

The first time I did this, I walked to the earlier train and asked the guard if we could travel. They asked us to wait for the train on our ticket. The second time, I just got on board, prepared to feign astonishment that I was on the wrong train. On that occasion, the guard didn't notice that we were on too early a train when checking out ticket.

 

[pdeaves]

A Network SouthEast rail day (remember them?) had all sorts of weird and wonderful 'enthusiast' workings. My party had a huge itinerary; one of the first workings was Oxford-Bletchley. Unfortunately the planner misread the timetable (moved left one column by mistake) so we arrived at Bletchley way after the next planned train had left. The entire day went to pot after that!

 

[Mitch in Notts]

Last Monday I caught the 1436 ex Lincoln to alight at Newark Castle. The 1446 to Newark Northgate was the next train from the same platform. On board there was a lady behind me who had an advance purchase from Northgate to Newcastle who decided to stay to Castle and was making her own way to Northgate for the 1547. A group of 4 with foreign accents were directed to alight at Collingham and return to Lincoln to start again. This was just in my short section of carriage. Wonder how many are caught out by this?
Walking into Newark Town Centre I was stopped by another foreign man with a Rail issued piece of card with a map of how to get from Northgate to Castle - he was going to Nottingham - and was lost - I directed him onwards. What an afternoon....

 

[gord]

Used to travel from my family home in Lowestoft back to university in Bangor a lot in the late 90s.

Never made the mistake myself but encountered the London Liverpool St/Liverpool Lime St mix up on the train from Norwich a lot. Both trains use to depart fairly close to each other too.

One journey that sticks out in my mind wasn't really a fail on my part. I had stopped in Nottingham for a few hours to visit a friend on the journey back to Bangor and had stayed far longer than I had planned. I got to Birmingham New Street to catch the last late night train back to Bangor. It was bitterly cold and I was incredibly tired. The train was waiting on the platform, I don't do train numbers but I remember it was loco hauled with several 'Regional Railways' coaches. It wasn't ready to board yet so I found a bench on platform, huddled under my big coat and dozed off. I was soon woken by a member of station staff who asked me to leave the station and that I couldn't sleep there overnight. I showed him my ticket and apologised telling him I had had a long day. He kindly led me to a heated waited room and said he'd be back to check I was awake and had boarded the train before it left. I didn't fall asleep again and soon the train doors were unlocked.

It was a really old train and still had compartments inside, which was surprising even for the late 90s. There was hardly anyone on the train so I found a compartment to myself, hunkered down and got comfortable. Soon we left New Street and headed out into the Black Country. I was enjoying the frost covered landscape and the frozen canals going by when suddenly all the lights in the coach went out. However, the train kept moving as normal. I grabbed my bags and started to fumble my way through the train when I saw a tiny light in the next carriage. It was another passenger using her lighter to see. She led us both down the train trying to find anyone else when eventually we got to a carriage with the lights on, around 15 other passengers and the guard was there checking tickets. "Ah, you found us", he said, "Take a seat and I'll get around to you". When I asked him what had happened he told me that the train was so quiet that it made sense just to have the one carriage available to save power! I don't know if there was a problem with the train that night but would have been nice to have been told at New Street!

Then back at Bangor, all the taxi drivers refused to take me up the icy hill back to my halls of residence so a 40 minute, slippery walk at 2am awaited me.

 

[causton]

Something slightly different, is that I once missed my train to work because I recently moved one stop further up the line, and all my well-remembered times in my head were for the old station and not for the new one

 

[iantherev]

Many years ago when an undergraduate at Aberystwyth I fancied a day trip to Sheffield on a Saturday and so headed off to the station for the 05:15 train (I was keen and teetotal in those days). For some mysterious reason the 05:15 did not run on Bank Holiday weekends and I arrived to find the station locked. Rather than wait outside for 90 minutes, I walked back up Penglais Hill had a coffee and then back down the hill for the 07:15. I did get to Sheffield though (out via Derby back via Stockport).

 

[Peter Mugridge]

At the time of the changeover from loco haulage to 390s on the West Coast, some of you may remember there was a top and tail class 90 diagram shuttling between New Street and Manchester Piccadilly. Guess who managed to be on the wrong platform at Wolverhampton and missed it northbound to Stafford and it was too late to wait for it to come back again? Yep... me... and on that day the locomotives were 90 037 and 90 040 - which a couple of weeks later went into store for several years and although both now run again, the chances of getting them on passenger work are virtually zero.

They remain, to this day, the only two 90s I haven't had for haulage.


More recently, Friday last week 7th September, at Gare du Nord.

Now, whenever I go to Paris I bring back a few packs of Petit Ecolier and Pepito biscuits, which are very popular both at home and at work but they don't sell them in this country. Anyway, having a slightly bigger suitcase than normal last week I took the opportunity to buy a few packets more than normal.

For those not familiar with these biscuits, the packets each contain two foil wrapped sub-packets.

I should really have realised what ten neatly arranged packs of these biscuits would look like on the x-ray scanner shouldn't I...?!?

The first indication of a problem was when they stopped the belt and reversed it a couple of times before taking the case off the scanner and carrying it onto the examination table. To make matters worse, I had forgotten to pack a carrier bag for the laundry, so there was four days worth of worn socks, pants, vests and shirts packed loose in the case.

Capping it all off, when it became obvious to the Douane what the shapes on the scanner screen actually were, one of them held up a packet of biscuits for all the others to see and said: "It's these!" then they all started laughing.

( Clearly that was the international biscuit smuggling ring busted! )

 

[krus_aragon]

Then back at Bangor, all the taxi drivers refused to take me up the icy hill back to my halls of residence so a 40 minute, slippery walk at 2am awaited me.

Ah, were you were up at the St Mary's site? Those students complaining about walking up Glanrafon Hill (or B***** Hill) don't know what they're talking about...

 

[Killingworth]

Coming back from Newcastle to Sheffield recently I was very pleased that on a Northern strike day East Midlands were stopping a Norwich - Liverpool service at Dore & Totley. (The train reverses at Sheffield passing through Dore & Totley twice.) Word had got round and quite a few of us were taking advantage.

As we stopped at Dore a number of travellers looked surprised at the extra stop. About 20 of us got off including the lady sitting alongside me. I noticed she was looking very confused on the platform. She walked slowly into the car park and looked around. I thought maybe she might have been wanting to go to Stockport.

Where was she? Was she in Sheffield? Yes, but not at the main station. She said she was supposed to be being picked up. She'd slept through Sheffield, apparently oblivious. Meanwhile, an hourly TPE service back towards Sheffield had pulled in, and left. I explained where we were and she phoned the person who was supposed to be meeting her. He was still waiting at Sheffield, but neither knew the city so directions were relayed for him to come and get her. It was the evening rush hour when it's 7 minutes by train but possibly 30-40 minutes by car assuming you know the way. I assume they eventually did meet up, but it was just as well Northern were on strike or she'd have had to come back, or be picked up, from Stockport