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Man wakes up after night on sleeper train to find it never left Glasgow
- brianbreslin 4y agoAm I the only person who wonders how someone could sleep so deeply that they don't notice the train never moved? I'm guessing he was on ambien or something? It could have been worse, he could have woken up at some town in the middle of the journey.
- magicalhippo 4y ago> Am I the only person who wonders how someone could sleep so deeply that they don't notice the train never moved? When I sleep at night, I never wake up due to my house staying in place. Why would it be different on a train?
- cuttysnark 4y agoFair, but if your house were to move to Glasgow whilst you were asleep, I bet you'd wake up.
- aidenn0 4y agoNoticing something didn't happen is much harder than noticing something did, particularly when you are sleeping.
- cuttysnark 4y agoMy joke, which clearly missed, was about expectation. Not waking up because your house remains still (as you expect it to) is different than sleeping a train you're expecting to, at some point, be moving and undulating. I say this as a person who falls asleep in moving vehicles—and wakes up if they stop for more than a few minutes.
- dghughes 4y agoI can't sleep in anything that moves even slightly. I was on a ferry when it was stuck in ice. I had been awake since the morning before, I couldn't sleep on the ferry even immobile due to any vibration. If I was on a train I'd feel any motion no matter how smooth.
- andsoitis 4y agoRight, but that just emphasizes the parent comment: if there’s nothing to disturb your sleep, why would you wake up to notice the train isn’t moving.
- LatteLazy 4y agoOnce you're asleep you're unlikely to be aware the train has moved or stopped. I got the sleeper to Exeter sometimes (not sure it still exists, this is over a decade ago and it wasn't advertised even then). If I fell asleep at paddington I wouldn't wake up when we (didn't) move. Similarly, it got to exeter around 5am but didn't leave until 7ish, you could select when they woke you up: on arrival or 30min before departure. I never woke thinking "we've not moving when we should be"
- iggldiggl 4y agoIf you mean the through sleeper to Penzance then yes, that still runs and the down train still seems to be booked to stand for almost an hour at Exeter, but it now departs around 4-ish, so quite a bit earlier. Going the other way it stays in the platform at Paddington for quite a while, so while it's booked to arrive shortly after 5:00, you can stay on until around 7-ish. One interesting thing I've seen in older timetables (late 70s / early 80s) is that in some intermediate locations (e.g. Carlisle) they apparently did the same thing with through carriages which were then shunted onto/off the main sleeper train in order to let passengers from that station board earlier/sleep longer than would be possible based on the arrival/departure times of the main portion of that train.
- grapeskin 4y agoI think one of the main purposes of sleep is that your mind shuts down and you have no clue what happens during that time. Anything else and it wouldn’t be sleep.
- ne0flex 4y agoFor some reason, your comment reminded me of one time in elementary school. I got some from school around 3:30, felt tired and then went straight to bed. I woke up around 8:00 and started freaking out, thinking that I had woken up at 8AM instead of 8PM (the sun was still out and resembled the sunrise). I rushed to get my stuff ready to leave for school and went downstairs. Saw my dad just sitting there, so I yelled at him that I'm going to be late for school and why didn't he wake me up. He gave me a confused look and said, " I guess you slept well, it's 8PM."
- kayodelycaon 4y agoBeen there. Switched to 24-hour time (8:30 PM = 2030). Now I'm only annoyed by the number of devices, applications, and people that don't support 24-hour time. :)
- HyprMusic 4y agoThat's not how sleep works at all. Your sleep goes through many different phases and your brain is continually monitoring its surroundings for danger[0]. The reason why you feel like your mind is shut down is because, on a normal night of sleeping in your comfy home, nothing extraordinary happens. Try sleeping in the wild, it will be a whole different experience. [0] https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2022/01/06/JNEUROSCI.2524-20.2021 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2022/01/06/JNEUROSCI...
- grapeskin 4y agoThe wild is a very different environment from a train ridden by a dude with years of acclimation to it. A comfortable train seat or train bed is definitely a place where a tired person can and will ass out. I’ve slept through a plane takeoff and food service and thought 5 minutes passed, only to realize it’d been hours.
- zeristor 4y agoThe article mentions that he had been using the Sleeper train for 15 years, so I imagine he's used to it.
- gwbas1c 4y agoMaybe because it wasn't moving, he slept more deeply than usual?
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoevery night when i sleep, i call the process "shutting down". i do NOT hear or feel anything, my family members have to rage shake me to get me up in the middle of the night if there is an emergency, earthquake or something of that sort. i NEVER hear the alarm clock in the morning or during the night, that means like last month i had to catch a 4 AM flight and i could not guarantee that i would get up at 2am, change and leave so i did the next best thing, i stayed up all night. (this was when i was alone for some reason) i listen to audiobooks when i am "Falling asleep", been doing that for the last decade, without fail. one time my phone broke and i felt "weird" sleeping without some narrator speaking to me. the rage shake thing, that is real. funny thing, i can sometimes "hear, like being in a well and looking out kind of feeling, but can't put 2 and 2 together with regards to something is trying to wake me up"...
- iso1631 4y agoI was in an earthquake once and only woke up when I hit the floor
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agofunny. i remember falling from the bed and speaking some expletives and jumping back up automatically. no in the moment attention towards what had happened or why
- green-salt 4y agoI wonder if this is a result of some kind of sleep paralysis?
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agodont know.... i have read about sleep paralysis but i cannot remember any of the symptoms. in our culture, we have the story of the sleep entity which is akin to sleep paralysis in all of its symptoms but i've never felt that. the "shutting down" thing for me is because in the morning, like most people there is no sense of passage of time but generally no dreams also. its like you wink and boom, 8 hours have passed. my mum has the lightest sleep on the contrary. we can walk outside their room, on tiptoes and flick a switch and mum is out in 2 seconds. polar opposite.
- OJFord 4y agoI fell asleep before take-off in Canada (YYZ) for the UK (LHR) a few months ago. I slept most of the way; it was only through conversation afterwards that I found out there was almost a 3h delay before we even started taxiing. If you're saying you have awareness while sleeping of something that should happen, and you'll wake up if you don't detect it, I certainly don't share that.
- allknowingfrog 4y agoYou're not alone, but I think we're in the minority. If I were expecting to be moving all night, I'm confident that the stillness would eventually disturb me. I tend to wake up to any unexpected noise or movement.
- draw_down 4y ago
- hiyer 4y agoHaving traveled overnight on trains several times, I can confirm that I would regularly wake up when the train stopped at a station. But this was probably because the train's state _changed_ from moving to stopped. In this case, since the train presumably never even started, I can understand why the passenger didn't wake up.
- gumby 4y agoDoesn’t seem odd to me; I’ve slept through customs stops and other events on sleeper trains in the past. I’ve fallen asleep in busy hotel lobbies and often fall asleep on planes before takeoff.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoIt's pretty normal to have a few beers before boarding that train. You sleep like the dead.
- gregoriol 4y agoI would at least check that the train is indeed leaving before going to sleep. Even more on a day when there were disruptions. It is at least important to be able to hear any announcements.
- gadders 4y agoI've slept through aeroplane take-offs. Landings normally wake me up with a jolt though.
- 6c696e7578 4y agoI've slept on the train plenty of times. Once you get used to the journey I honestly don't know how, but you often wake up just before you stop. Fortunately I've not missed my stop when sober. I'm sure the first few journeys would be harder to sleep through, but once you get used to it, it would be weird to not fall asleep if you plan it as rest time. I just don't think I could fall asleep in Glasgow though...
- green-salt 4y agoI was able to do this on Amtrak on a particularly hell commute. Get on train, get seat, zonk out. Wake up a stop or 2 before mine. Felt like some kind of super power.
- thriftwy 4y agoBased on a prior art of classic Soviet children poem: https://ruverses.com/samuil-marshak/what-an-absent-minded-man/7382/ https://ruverses.com/samuil-marshak/what-an-absent-minded-ma...
- khovdi 4y agoAlso the translation is a classic in Hebrew: https://www.kibutz-poalim.co.il/page_8975 https://www.kibutz-poalim.co.il/page_8975 While in the original version in Russian the main character heads out of St. Petersburg, in Hebrew version you have the old edition, where the train goes to Egypt, but as a train connection has been cut of, during the war, the later edition features train going from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
- charlieegan3 4y agoThis is actually surprising common in the anecdotal experience of myself and my family. (Common that the train never leaves the origin station, though once my mother slept all night in Euston!) The rolling stock is pretty modern, but the locomotives appear to be quite unreliable. Finding a replacement at short notice is tricky. I’ve been a handful of services where this happened. The sleeper is generally unreliable in addition to the locomotive situation. The highlander services travel almost the entire length of the country making chances of running into a local issue in an ageing and underfunded rail network quite common. Usually this means you are woken in the small hours and put on the first ‘day time’ alternative.
- c22 4y agoOne time I boarded a 12 hour long international flight. The plane taxied out to the runway just as a dense fog was descending. It was deemed too dangerous to take off and too dangerous to even taxi back to the gate. It took all night for the fog to clear (over ten hours) so I definitely fell asleep and woke up again while we were still on the tarmac. Then we had to wait for them to restock all the drinks and food that had been consumed overnight before we could finally take off.
- goda90 4y agoAs someone who is profoundly uncomfortable in economy seats, but doesn't feel rich enough for upgrades most of the time, this sounds like my nightmare.
- c22 4y agoFortunately for me this was one of only two times in my life I splurged for first class (mostly due to the length of the flight). They kept offering us champagne and extra snacks from economy, so that took the edge off quite a bit.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoStuck on a runway where nobody can see your plane through the fog sounds absolutely terrifying, like a setup for another Tenerife. I can just imagine traffic control changing shift, maybe they're sleep deprived or drunk, and the next thing you know another plane cuts straight through yours.
- samschooler 4y agoFor people who didn't get what Tenerife referenced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
- Nicksil 4y agoSimilar at Linate in Milan, Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linate_Airport_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linate_Airport_disaster
- pcl 4y ago> We made all efforts to support guests impacted, including providing overnight accommodation on board Well, I guess that’s one way to justify the situation!
- zeristor 4y agoAlthough normally the flush toilets empty out onto the tracks, I trust this has been stopped. The track workers quite rightly didn’t like it. One of the grimmest things at getting off of a train at Liverpool St station is the smell of train loos that had emptied out in the station. In time I trust it will ebb away.
- pmyteh 4y agoIt's certainly stopped in the case of the Caledonian Sleeper; the new Mark 5 carriages have retention toilets like all other recent stock. I think the Mark 3A sleepers on the Night Riviera to Cornwall also came fitted with retention toilets from new in the 80s, but I wouldn't swear to it. Mark 3 day carriages definitely flushed onto the tracks, though those that are left are being retrofitted with tanks. I always found the visible turds and toilet paper worse than the smell, but I haven't spent much time at Liverpool Street specifically.
- decafninja 4y agoThere's a recent science fiction book I read where one of the premises is a generation starship designed to escape an apocalyptic Earth, but for reasons never manages to launch from its underground hangar. Yet its passenger population, locked inside its habitat module, live and die through multiple generations over hundreds of years thinking they are traveling through space.
- wikibob 4y agoThis is the plot of Ascension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)
- dmead 4y agothis is the premise of ascension. it was cancelled by netflix after 1 season
- linuxlizard 4y agoOooo I think I know that book. Really good book. I didn't see that twist coming.
- fullstick 4y agoWhat book is this?
- AlwaysRock 4y agoYes please share.
- funkfuzz 4y agoNot the commenter, this premise is a story line in Anthony Doerr's "Cloud Cuckoo Land" (2021). This knowledge is a bit of a spoiler, however.
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- gregoriol 4y agoIt is stunning that this person went to sleep before the train left the station, even more so on a day that apparently had seen some disruptions on tracks already. It feels important to me to hear any announcements and ensure everything is "on track" before going to relax and sleep.
- Blackstone4 4y agoYou'd hope that a passenger could establish the train was on track...before they got on!!
- Blackstone4 4y agoCome on did no one get the joke?!
- frosted-flakes 4y agoWhy? The article said he's been using the service for 15 years. At some point you just fall into a groove. Just like frequent fliers that zonk out before the plane takes off, and wake up upon landing.
- gregoriol 4y agoWhy? because then you end up surprised of not having traveled anywhere a few hours later because you missed an important announcement
- pm215 4y agoYou can board the sleeper in Glasgow any time starting 2200, with the expected departure time 2340, and arrival in Euston 0707, last vacate-the-train time 0730. If you are used to using the service and want to get a reasonable 8 hours sleep then it's totally reasonable to board and go to sleep well before the expected departure time -- indeed, that's part of why they let you board early. Plus, suppose that it was 2340 or later, and they informed you that the train wasn't going anywhere -- by that time of night "sleep on the train and figure out a plan B in the morning" is probably your best bet anyway.
- amtamt 4y agoThis could have been a more apt ending for Phileas Fogg.
- tpoacher 4y agoTaking a sleeper train "to work" ... ouch. How does that even work?
- em-bee 4y agoleave your home in the evening, arrive in the city where your office is in the morning. i did that a few times when i had to attend in-person meetings in a remote location that was just an over-night train away.
- tantalor 4y agoThe same way people take red-eye flights to work. Pack a bag.
- Someone 4y agoIt’s not uncommon in the UK to have a house in the countryside and an apartment in the city where they work. I can see such people using the sleeper train to London, work for a few days there, sleeping in their apartment, and returning using another sleeper train.
- zeristor 4y agoMaybe he’s a dreamer?
- irrational 4y agoLong ago I had a coworker that would fly to work a few times a week. He lived back east and could make it to the offices in the west coast fairly early in the morning. Of course, this was in the days when the internet was in its infancy and long distance phone calls still cost an arm and a leg.
- thebruce87m 4y agoWe went on holiday to London and got the sleeper back. Get on the train at 9pm, get some sleep. The train arrived in our home city at 5am. One hour before your destination you are woken up with breakfast. The room is small, with bunk beds, but it has an en-suite bathroom including a shower. Note: the train does not go slowly. I imagined a sauntering pace through the countryside, but the thing pelted through.
- zeristor 4y agoLemon scented napkins never smelt so good. Edit: Referring to HHGTTG: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/2sflZ6N9HJ144nxRqsnGslK/zarniwoop https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/2sflZ6N9HJ144nxRqs...
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI found out, the hard way, about how the UK Rail system works. Apparently, if a train is delayed, the owner is fined per hour. This incentivizes cancellation. I assume the train was canceled. No idea why they let the passengers sleep through. That's weird. This is an object lesson on unintended consequences.
- TylerE 4y agoPresumably many of the travelers would have had no where else to spend the night, at least without incurring substantial expense.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoSo they saved the fines, and the need to pay for hotels.
- zhte415 4y agoCancellations are fined. You may find this useful as a starting point for further reading. [1] An object lesson on HN comments? [1] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/information-for-operators/payments-for-disruption-on-the-railway/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/inform...
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> Cancellations are fined. You may find this useful as a starting point for further reading. [1] An object lesson on HN comments? [1] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/information-for-operators/payments-for-disruption-on-the-railway/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/inform... - Thank you for the link. It introduces some good, empirical data to the conversation, and I am grateful for your contribution. But are they fined the way that latenesses are? > Each cancellation is worth a certain amount of ‘delay minutes’, which reflects the disruption that passengers face as a result of having to wait for the next train. That sounds like a formula for exactly what I was talking about (I never said that the cancellation wasn't fined). > An object lesson on HN comments? Be nice. That extra line was completely unnecessary, and is, indeed, an object lesson on HN comments. Here's another link for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments Have a nice day.
- nickdothutton 4y agoI’ve caught the sleeper from London to Inverness. A fun experience but it was £800.
- thebruce87m 4y agoThat’s a lot! I got it recently from London to Stirling. 3 of us travelled - 2 rooms with 2 bunks in each. It was £430 in total. I would think the distance doesn’t affect the price since they can’t reuse the room. And I assume you pay per room too? My wife booked it so I’m not sure of the exact details. Maybe my assumptions are wrong!
- pmyteh 4y agoThere are wide variations in price: some advance purchase sleeper only fares are cheap; at the outside a full-price Anytime ticket plus a room supplement to use the sleeper could cost a fortune. And pricing is not straightforward once you start digging in: have a look at http://brfares.com/!expert?orig=EUS&dest=FTW http://brfares.com/!expert?orig=EUS&dest=FTW for example...
- gerjomarty 4y agoJust to try to provide a little more context on this. This was in the wake of an unprecedented heatwave. The all-time record high temperature was set that day, and even though this was set in a different part of the country from where Caledonian Sleeper usually runs through, the unusually high temperatures covered a very wide area of the UK. While trains can run without issue in these kinds of temperatures in other countries, the temperatures we saw over those two days exceeded the operational window much of the British network was designed and built for. It looks like there were massive Overhead Line problems on the route the Sleeper normally takes (the West Coast Main Line), and it was too late to try to divert onto the alternative line the Sleeper uses (the East Coast Main Line). Although, the ECML was arguably faring worse at the time! These are the only two lines the Sleeper can use to get south. On board the Caledonian Sleeper, you can fill in a breakfast card with items you want the next morning, but notably this card also includes options about being informed or not about disruption. So if you really want to be woken up en-route to be told about late running or cancellation, there should have been the option to do so for those whose priority is on-time running to London (versus those who are more flexible or less worried about their arrival time). It's not clear in this case whether the person from TFA used this option, or if they did and the process broke down in some way. In retrospect it was probably foolhardy for CS to advise their customers that things would be running when so much around them was figuratively crashing to the ground. Ideally they would have pre-cancelled and allowed customers to make their own plans, which could have included using the train as a hotel overnight, as happened anyway. Most train operators in the UK, including Caledonian Sleeper, operate a scheme called Delay Repay, which refunds users who start their journey and end up at their destination late. Terms differ per operator, e.g. some only pay out in circumstances that are their fault, some only pay out after 30 minutes of lateness. In this instance, Caledonian Sleeper start refunds after 30 minutes of delay, for any reason. So at least the overnight stay at Glasgow would have been free of charge!
- Postosuchus 4y agoFrom Russia with love: https://ruverses.com/samuil-marshak/what-an-absent-minded-man/7382/ https://ruverses.com/samuil-marshak/what-an-absent-minded-ma...