Visual Journal: Getting on the WRONG TRAIN!!!!

I am still travelling to Nottingham every day at the moment, doing my workshops at various schools. It was all going well until after school at Old Basford Primary this afternoon. I missed my train home by the skin of my teeth, so I bought a coffee and sat in the station cafe while I waited for the next one (way too cold to sit outside). 

I started to sketch, to pass the time and got chatting to the woman next to me. Suddenly there was only 5 minutes to go, so I packed up my pencils really quickly and jumped onto the train, before I missed that one too!

Unfortunately, Nottingham doubles up the trains on some platforms: 2 different trains actually sit end to end, so they look like one long train. The one I got on looked like it was mine, it even left at more or less the right time. 

I sketched the sunset through the window as we approached Derby. I thought it unusual to pass through Derby, but there are different routes and my geography is not that great,  and the ticket collector had franked my ticket as normal... So I put it out of my mind and started sketching the man across the way: 

It was very dark by now and none of the stations we passed through after Derby were lit up enough to see their names. Then I suddenly realised it was 5.15 - the time we were due into Sheffield - but we were pulling into yet another itsy-bitsy station in the middle of nowhere. Alarm bells finally rang.

By now I was only 2 stations from the end of the line: Matlock! My fellow passengers were very kind and, instead of laughing at me, told me the only thing to do was to carry on and wait for the train to turn round and come back. So I sat on the now empty train at Matlock and waited:

We had to crawl once more through all the itsy-bitsy, unlit stations until we got back to Derby, where I could change trains and finally get back on track.

Eventually we pulled into Sheffield at 7pm. At last. I jumped into a black cab, which got me home for quarter past - quite a journey. What an idiot.