A Scottish man travelling down to London on a sleeper train woke up the following morning to find that the train had never left the station.
Jim Metcalfe boarded the Caledonian Sleeper train on Tuesday night and fell asleep under the assumption that he would wake up in the UK capital on Wednesday morning. However, he and the other passengers were not informed that the service had been cancelled due to the heatwave.
The charity chief executive from East Renfrewshire awoke early the next day and was "thrown off" the train — still in Glasgow.
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In a tweet posted on Wednesday morning, the passenger wrote: "In 15 years of using this train, and through many bizarre twists and turns, this has to be strangest yet. 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."
Being interviewed by the BBC, he said: "I can't sleep before it starts moving so I get on early and try to sleep first, so I got on at 22:30 and was asleep by 23:00. That was it really.
"There was a knock on the door at 05:00 and a guy very kindly appeared with a roll and sausage and coffee - he explained the train hadn't moved.
"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 continued: "I would say in a really difficult situation, the onboard train staff were really calm and professional and handled it as best they could.
"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."
Speaking to the Scottish Sun, Serco’s Managing Director for Caledonian Sleeper Kathryn Darbandi 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.”
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