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Passengers 'stuck' after train driver gets 'lost'
Sky News Sky News 16 hours ago

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Baffled train passengers ended up in South Yorkshire after their driver got "lost" on a route from Newcastle to Reading.

Jeni Harvey, who was riding the CrossCountry Train service, tweeted to say she was "stuck because the driver went the wrong way" on Friday.

She added: "Who knew this was even possible?"

Twitter user Ruth Adams replied: "I really did not know that trains could get lost!"

Ms Harvey tweeted back: "No! You wouldn't, would you?! But as hundreds of us unfortunately found yesterday, indeed they can...!"

The train was eventually redirected to Sheffield where the service was terminated, The Yorkshire Post reports.

Passengers then had to catch a different train to their intended destination.

A CrossCountry spokesperson said: "Unfortunately, while being diverted because of an earlier event, our 14:35 service from Newcastle to Reading was involved in an operational incident near Pontefract that meant it was unable to continue.

"After a delay the train was able to travel to Sheffield were it was terminated, and customers were able to continue their journeys on alternative services.

"The cause of this incident is currently being investigated."

Ms Harvey's train was "lost" days after disruptions followed the largest timetable shake-up in Britain for decades.

More than four million trains were rescheduled in the move, but passengers complained after many were cancelled.!

i presume the driver didn't know the route and somebody failed to check before diverting the train.

However, should the driver taken the junction signal showing the wrong route. Although if it was green he wouldn't have had time to stop.

Not sure which line he took possibly Knottingly and Swinton joint but there's still a maze of lines round Pontefrat.

Different context, but an old one from The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worker-jailed-for-theft-of-trains-1187721.html)

It is not the fault of the driver, if the signaller has set the wrong route and thereby directs a train to the wrong place.
The driver is however meant to notice this, stop and report it promptly.

Years ago, was there not a celebrated case of a passenger train being sent onto a goods only route and into the coal unloading facility at a power station ?

I don't suppose for a minute that the wrong route was set. For a start, the official coding of the cancellation is as a TOC cause: TG which is helpfully titled, in full "Driver". (The official abbreviation of that is "TOC Driver", which is an unusual meaning of the word abbreviation.)

The train disappears from its WTT routing at Colton Jn, eventually rejoining it at Swinton. Presumably it was rerouted via Sherburn-in-Elmet to avoid Doncaster, for some operational reason, and the driver was not happy about that. We don't know why - maybe the diversion was wrongly explained, or misunderstood, or the driver was indeed not fit to drive that route. But you know what stuff happens - maybe the instruction was garbled, the driver stopped to check with some controller, and got given wrong information that confused things even more.

In any case, if I'd got on that train intending to alight at Doncaster, and it turned off so as to bypass there, I'd say it went the wrong way.

What train? Which day?

.

1V91 1436 Newcastle to Sheffield (vice Reading) Friday 25th May. It is in the report, if you look.

I think several of us have read through to see ...

1V91 1436 Newcastle to Reading
CrossCountry service departing on 25th May 2018

Here's a further report


From: https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/train-gets-lost-in-yorkshire-after-it-goes-the-wrong-way-1-9182229

Found it. 1V91 1436 from Newcastle on Friday 25th May.


Maybe suppose a bit longer. :P

Wrong route set at Ferrybridge North for its booked diversion avoiding Doncaster. Was mistakenly routed to Doncaster. Both Network Rail and CrossCountry reported that internally. Driver accepted the wrong route and took it.

I'd say that is both driver and signaller error. Drivers are trained to be situationally aware of such possibilities and are meant to stop and inform if the wrong route is set.

According to another forum, the driver signed the route mistakenly taken but the guard didn't.

Yes. Thank you.  ::) ::) ::)

'Yesterday' and '1435' are not very helpful in identifying the train concerned. No where in the report in the OP is 1V91 and 1436 mentioned.

Well, the obvious reaction to that (apart from noting the amount of confusion still present) is that flagging the cause as "TOC Driver" seems wrong. The primary error was the signalling one, and any lack of vigilance by the driver is only a secondary matter. However, there is an official ruling on this, in the Delay Attribution Guide:

Of course this incident doesn't quite fit that. It's not a delay issue, but the guide does cover "reliability events" such as cancellations. If the route taken had been viable, it would actually have restored the call at Doncaster due to be missed. (There probably isn't a specific code for that, though.) I think, from the record, Doncaster station was still closed by a trespass incident at the time, so the diversion was still needed.

In terms of time taken, stopping before the divergence would eliminate most of the delay, so maybe splitting it equally is fair after all. And a short delay is much less likely to lead to a cancellation, so you can see a justification of sorts for hanging that round the driver's neck - though it does still look harsh. Finally, can you divide a cancellation between two incidents and two causes? Maybe you can in the complete form-to-be-filled-in, but not in the brief version visible in RTT.

What a crazy way to run a railway. Instead of worrying about why the incident happened it#s all about passing the buck.

My questions are:

If ti was intended that the train was being diverted to avoid Doncaster did the Ferrybridge signalman route it to Doncaster?

Why if the driver knew both routes from Knottingly didn't the guard?

The route signalled and taken in error was apparently known to the CrossCountry driver as he was ex-Grand Central and still had current route knowledge from Ferrybridge to Doncaster via Askern. It's not a route that CrossCountry drivers and guards would usually sign.