transport failures

[hash tag]

Lets have your transport failures. Have you ever meant to be going to Twickenham and ended up in Timbuktu?
Pissed after a night out at London Bridge, I somehow managed to get on the wrong train ( with bicycle ) and ended up somewhere like
Sevenoaks or Orpington when I was trying to get to East Croydon.
Lots of kudos on offer for biggest fail.

 

[Elpenor]

Got a train lateish going out of London bridge; for some reason got off at Hither Green which wasn’t my stop. Decided to walk to the next stop, Grove Park, as the next train wasn’t for 10 minutes or so. Drunk logic at work here.

This the late 90s so unless you carried an A-Z you had no chance. Walked for hours around an eerily deserted Downham (a large post war? housing estate I had no knowledge with few distinguishing features) trying to find Grove Park station, ended up going round in circles.

Might have called my Mum to collect me around 2am long after trains had stopped. She was thrilled no doubt

 

[StoneRoad]

hash tag - do you mean something cocked up personally or cock-ups with the system ?

For the former, managed to get off at the wrong station in Rotterdam once - Stop one too soon.
Corrected by getting a local train ...

System failing - I could write a book ! Over the years I've had quite a few adventures with British Rail. Some entertaining diverted and re-routed trips, especially on the weekends / bank holidays and before rail replacement buses/coaches were used.
Funniest in retrospect - helping to put out [cool down] a hot box on an HST with a couple of fire extinguishers about 30 years ago. [the smell of cooked bearing is quite distinctive] and doing something very similar on a tramway only a few months ago.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

There’s a tech I used to work with who became legendary in the industry when he had to drive a van full of kit from Birmingham to Leeds Castle.

You can probably all work out where this is going

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/one-night-in-basingstoke.117478/

https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/your-biggest-cock-up-at-work.354242/

 

[hash tag]

My first ever job I worked with a total pisshead of a boss. He used to boast that if he could manage to find his car he could get himself home.
It was my first christmas there and his treat was to take all the staff to the pub. I was on the second of two shifts. He did not believe in a glass half full.
As soon as your glass a new drink was ordered be it a pint, a short or wine; there were no half's, etc. Anyway, being very young, I ended up wrecked.
I managed to get a train at Streatham and ended up at Norwood Junction, got off the train, sat on a bench and promptly fell asleep/passed out for a
while. It was freezing cold and snow lay thick on the ground. Had I meant to go to Norwood and how I got home I have no idea.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I once got a train from Waterloo and some pissed Spanish bloke wobbled on, he asked if I could wake him at Clapham Jct if he nodded off, I tried to explain that I was only going to Vauxhall, but he didn't seem to understand. I hope he got home OK.

 

[Maggot]

When I lived in Croydon in the 80s, I fell asleep on the train and woke up in Brighton - twice.
There were no more trains back the first time, so I called on some friends who lived in Brighton and stayed there. The second time, I also went to the friends house but they were out. Fortunately their house was really easy to break into, so they came back in the middle of the night to find me alseep on ther sofa.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I’m always so fucking paranoid about getting the wrong train or bus but mostly survived ok.

One persistent problem was getting on the wrong train on the central line and winding up in grange hill not epping

 

[Spymaster]

The most irritating transport failure I've been involved in was of my own making.

A large group of us had rented a villa near Bergerac for a friend's 40th. On the last day there were 2 Ryanair flights back to London, one in the morning and one in the evening. I made 2 trips in the morning, ferrying people to the airport then got back for lunch and to get ready for the evening flight home. That's when I realised that we should've been on the morning flight that I had cheerfully waived the others off on.

To add insult to injury, Ryanair knew they had us over a barrel and charged us £200 each to get home on the evening flight when the entire original return flights were under £100.

 

[platinumsage]

Wanted to get to Bath from Birmingham. Fell asleep on the train so missed changing at Bristol and woke up in Exeter. Got on a train to Bath but fell asleep again and woke up in Reading. Third time lucky though, and thanks to the ticket inspectors for allowing it all without penalty, they probably wouldn't do that nowadays.

 

[davesgcr]

Friend was a supervisor at St Pancras way before it was tarted up etc. One Saturday morning he checked an empty train that had come in on a football special overnight from Glasgow. (to Cricklewood for the removal of about a ton of empty cans and bottles etc - you can imagine what it was like)

Found this nice old boy fast asleep , no shoes (just slippers) and a comfy cardigan . He lived near Motherwell station and his son was on board from Central , so he stepped on board for a very quick drink. You can imagine what happened.

So they got him a coffee , gave him a "to whom it may concern" note on BR notepaper , stamped and dated - and got someone to walk him to Euston. He probably got home late afternoon.

On the Thameslink route here ,over carries to Bedford are very common - most get back OK , the odd one gets off say at Leagrave and get one back , nearly dying of hypothermia - best to say one as it invariably comes back on the overnight service. Staff there are very well acquainted in what do do ........

(though a friend went round the Circle line twice , and once ended up in a dark bus in a stack of them at Cricklewood garage having closed his eyes on a no 16 - )

 

[farmerbarleymow]

When I lived in an outer bit of Leeds I used to get the train back from drinking sessions in town. The last stop on the line was York so I woke up there a good few times as the last train pulled in.

 

[lazythursday]

A few years ago there was a night I was waiting for my partner to come home by train (a ten minute journey). I had spoken to him as he got on the train (he was drunk) and had tea ready. He didn't turn up. He sailed through my local station and on to Manchester. Where the train turned round, and passed back again through my local station, through the station he started at, and on through Bradford, Leeds and ended up at York around 11pm.

 

[Chz]

I'm normally pretty good about not dropping off on public transport. But after a late night the train was halted due to person on the tracks just outside of East Croydon, where I wanted to get off. Based on my watch, it must have taken at least 20 minutes to clear but by then I'd dropped off. Woke up at Kenley and my first reaction was to GTFO the train, so I did. To find that Kenley is in the literal middle of nowhere (by south London/north Surrey standards). There's just a giant forest across the road from the station and a cluster of little shops - all closed - on the station side of the road. I thought to myself, "If I'd just stayed on the train, I'd be in Caterham and there are plenty of minicabs there". (This was well after the last train going back into London, and before Uber et.al. existed. Due to the delay, the train I was on became the last train out to Caterham. I think it was second-last originally.)

So I'm a bit pissed off with myself, and pondering how pissed off the missus will be if I wake her up at 1am to come and get me. It was a bit foggy that night, and coming out of the fog in a literal halo of light is a 407 bus. Fuck me. The 407 stops outside my house. I don't think the driver had ever seen someone so happy to see him. I'd no idea this bus went down there, but the whole thing ended up a happy ending. Because I didn't then fall asleep on the bus and end up in Sutton.

 

[T & P]

Apart from the waking up at Ewell East/ West instead of Clapham Junction incident referred to by Bahnhof Strasse , I once fell asleep on a night bus, all the way to the last stop, whereby the driver woke me up and kicked me out unceremoniously, instead of having the common decency to let me sit inside the bus until it was time to start the return journey.

So I had to stand in the cold at the bus stop for 15-20 minutes, not 20 metres away from where the bus was standing with its driver sitting nice and cosy in the cabin, until it was time to go. Great ending to a night out

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Got on the wrong train on the east coast mainline when I was a teenager - instead of travelling north it was going south and I only realised once we'd set off. Next stop was bloody Peterborough.

Was a long day.

 

[marty21]

I used to regularly (whilst refreshed) fall asleep on various buses/trains/tubes - so have woken up in Morden a few times (I was living in Southfields) or Edgware/Burnt Oak (I was living in Temple fortune). Once fell asleep on a bus between Finsbury Park and Whitechapel and back again.(Should have got off in Clapton) , and have woken up at Walthamstow Central, and Chingford on the train. I thank the good lord for taxis firms that are based near train stations/bus stations/tube stations.

I had a few traffic mishaps whilst not on a night out - I was on my way to see a mate in Elmers End, near Beckenham, and managed to get the Express to Chatham (ffs) , have done Wembley Park on the Metropolitan line (sometimes they sneakily change it to non-stop - missing out on Finchley Road which was my destination.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I once got the train to Leeds and when I got off the train I was in Leeds.

Still have nightmares

 

[davesgcr]

For a short while , I commuted to Bromley South - good fast train from Victoria I recall.

I once got the only train of the day that was fast to Chatham - and the guard who clearly enjoyed his job , excelled me the full fare back to BS ,saying the staff rate was not available.........

 

[Dogsauce]

I did get on the wrong bus going to work one morning, only noticed when I saw the company notices on the bus were for Arriva, not FirstBus. Different colour bus and a double decker, I must have been daydreaming nearly as much as the driver who happily let me on when I showed him my First Bus weekly ticket.

It only involved an extra five minutes walk at the other end so not an inconvenience really.

 

[MickiQ]

When I lived in an outer bit of Leeds I used to get the train back from drinking sessions in town. The last stop on the line was York so I woke up there a good few times as the last train pulled in.

I went on a stag night in Manchester many years ago (pre-Mrs Q days), we caught the last train back to Crewe and staggered off to realise we were one short. He'd fallen asleep and the rest of us hadn't noticed. He was still snoring when the British Rail cleaning staff found him still aboard at Euston.

Got on the wrong train on the east coast mainline when I was a teenager - instead of travelling north it was going south and I only realised once we'd set off. Next stop was bloody Peterborough.

Was a long day.

When Eldest was about 18 or 19 she caught the train from Derby to Nottingham with a couple of mates. She rang me up to tell me she was at Manchester Airport but not to worry they were on their way back.