Hacker News Reader

Ouch!

That’s even worse than a pre-smartphone fail I encountered ~15 years ago.

I was on a train from London to Liverpool Lime Street Street, and somewhere around Nottingham one of the fellow passengers asked me when it would arrive in Liverpool Street Station.

View on HN

From Cambridge (UK), you can take trains either to Liverpool or to Liverpool Street Station (in London). Refugees would often be released from a nearby detention center with a ticket and instructions to take the train to Liverpool. More than one ended up lost and befuddled in Liverpool Street.

[2nd-hand story from, likewise, 15 years ago. Accuracy not guaranteed]

See also: New York Penn Station and Newark Penn Station are consecutive stops on the North-East Corridor line, and sound identical in conductor-ese. Causes regular panic attacks from first-time riders.

had similar encounters with people asking how much longer it will take to get to Ashford as their Eurostar train leaves soon while on a train that stops at Ashford (Middlesex) instead of Ashford International, in Kent

cf my disaster in Italy when I got off the train at Venezia Miestra (basically an industrial estate at the wrong end of a road bridge) instead of Venezia St Lucia (the bit with the canals and architecture).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com