Man wakes up after night on sleeper train to find it never left the station

After a bedding down for the night on the Caledonian Sleeper train on Tuesday - expecting to sleep through a 345-mile journey - passengers woke up to find it had never left the station.

Jim Metcalfe, a regular user of the sleeper train service from Scotland to London, recounted the strange events first thing on the morning of 20 July.

“In 15 years of using this train, and through many bizarre twists and turns, this has to be strangest yet,” Mr Metcalfe wrote on Twitter.

“Wake up, and the train never left Glasgow. It was just sat here all night, and now we have been thrown off it at 5.30am in the wrong city.”

The Caledonian Sleeper runs several routes between London and Scotland, with its Glasgow-London overnight service usually lasting seven and a half hours. Passengers can board from 10pm the evening of departure and stay on board until 7.30am the next morning.

Mr Metcalfe, who is from East Renfrewshire, clarified: “Cal Sleeper tweeted that the service was on last night, let people board, and just left us sitting here all night.

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“They let everyone get in and go to sleep, and just left us here. I’m travelling for work. It’s hard to even know what to say…”

After disembarking, Mr Metcalfe told the BBC: “I can’t sleep after it starts moving, so I get on early and try to sleep first, so I got on at 10.30pm and was asleep by 11pm. That was it really.”

Of the next morning, he said: “There was a knock on the door at 5am and a guy very kindly appeared with a sausage roll and coffee – he explained the train hadn’t moved.”

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“We were told we had to get off because they needed the platform back. It was more surreal than anything else – I should have been 300 miles away.”

He said he had checked before leaving home that the train was definitely running, since Wednesday was a day of disruption on the railways following the heatwave. It had definitely been scheduled to run, so he boarded as usual.

Mr Metcalfe praised Caledonian Sleeper staff, saying: “I would say in a really difficult situation, the onboard train staff were really calm and professional and handled it as best they could.”

He added: “I just went home, for me it was a minor inconvenience. But it is bringing home what is happening around the world on the climate emergency – it made it very real that you were experiencing this in real time.”

People were amused by the story, with the tweet attracting more than 4,900 likes on Twitter.

“I know it doesn’t really help but the train is definitely more than an hour late in reaching its destination so you should be able to claim,” suggested one helpful follower.

Kathryn Darbandi, Serco’s managing director for Caledonian Sleeper, said: “We apologise to guests affected by the cancellation of our overnight services between Scotland and London.

“This was due to a fault identified on the line, late in the evening, related to the extreme temperatures causing problems across the network, which were outside of our control.

“We made all efforts to support guests impacted, including providing overnight accommodation on board and options for travel on alternative rail services the next day. All guests will receive a full refund.”