When the working week comes to an end and the warm embrace of the weekend or time off beckons, sometimes you aren't at your best and tend to forget things you were supposed to do. Unfortunately for passengers on a train in Switzerland last week, the driver of the service took this idea to its logical extreme by forgetting to stop at a station the train should have stopped at.
According to a statement from Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), given to 20 Minuten, the incident occurred on a high-speed Intercity (IC) 1 service between Zurich and Geneva on Sunday, August 13. As per the route plan, after it arrives in Lausanne at 3.47pm, the IC 1 makes stops at Morges, Nyon and Geneva before coming to a final halt at Geneva Airport.
Nine minutes after leaving Lausanne, passengers to Morges were packing their things and getting ready to get off the train. However, instead of slowing to a stop on platform three, the train continued at full speed, much to the astonishment of passengers on the train and those waiting for the service at the station.
Passengers on the train were then forced to get off at Nyon and wait for the return train. In total, passengers arrived in the city 30 minutes late.
Immediately after, theories began to swirl about what had happened: Was it a brake failure, was there something amiss on the platform, or had SBB switched its timetable yet again? Then, the rail company revealed that it wasn’t a technical fault but some good old-fashioned “human error.”
It turned out that the driver had simply forgotten to stop at Morges and had carried on carefree towards Geneva. SBB added that the passengers on the train were incredibly unlucky, noting that a train missing a station only occurs in one out of 170.000 journeys, according to their data.
Anyone affected by the delays is encouraged to contact customer service, who will deal with refunds on a case-to-case basis. It is unclear what action will be taken regarding the driver, or indeed how they sped through the station without noticing their mistake.
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