I slept on a train from London once and ended up in Edinburgh. But that was planned :)

Also not a despair place. But the point is you can go far. Same must be true in Japan.

The Caledonian Sleeper!

To note, ending within the suburbs doesn't help that much if everything is closed and your choice is wandering the streets, spending 5h at the only opened bar, forking for an hotel or paying a cab.

That said, France is the same regarding commuting trains, oversleeping in Paris's RER will lead you to pleasing but pretty far away towns.

Did it once, and spent about 5h visiting the sleeping town by foot to mark the occasion. Did it again in the midst of winter, and the staff allowed me and the two other blokes to stay for the night in the next departing train with the heating on.

Spain had trains going well into the mountains as well. I can't imagine how it goes for Russia, China and India.

> Did it again in the midst of winter, and the staff allowed me and the two other blokes to stay for the night in the next departing train with the heating on.

That’s a notably kind and humane gesture in the midst of winter.

I was trying to think of one in Berlin, but on weekend nights the metro trains run all night, and don't really cross over huge gaps of non-city like the one highlighted in the article. At any U-Bahn end station on a party night, you'll wait 15-30 minutes and get on the next train going the other way. On non-party nights, get out your navigator app and wait the same for a night bus.

You could definitely take a regional train passing through the city, for two hours to somewhere like Magdeburg, but you don't get on those by mistake as they run infrequently, only stop at the bigger stations, and have separate platforms.

In Copenhagen you could reasonably plan to go from the central station to, say, Høje Taastrup, but fall asleep and end up in Aalborg 5 hours and 400km away.

Høje Taastrup is a large suburb at the edge of Copenhagen, and the end of an S-train line, but anyone who lives there will know an intercity train is faster. Trains to Aalborg stopping at Høje Taastrup leave at 00:50 and at 02:50 tonight. The other suitable intercity and regional trains overnight are to nearer places, 150km or so.

Six of the London tube lines have all night service on Friday and Saturday nights, so if you fall asleep on these, you won't be stuck.

https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/tube-improvements/what-we-are-do...

My route home is via commuter rail so I don't have that luxury. I wouldn't possible know what it is like to wake up after a few beers and find myself on the last train of the night, four stations past my stop, but rumour has it that the night bus network is pretty good at getting me^H^Hpeople home, even if the wait can be cold, so long as you've not actually left London. Or Uber.

https://sucs.org/~cmckenna/maps/busspider/2012-14/west-londo...

But if you don't wake up til the end of the line, it's probably pretty much like in Japan, except less clean.

Uxbridge, High Barnet, Edgware, all painful for a wake-up nudge from a rail worker at 1am.

Cockfosters was proper despair, and Mordor (or Morden) well... don't.

What took the cake though was flying back and arriving at Stansted after midnight and waiting for the 5am escape back home in the depths of winter.

London offered many memorable evenings for those silly enough to party in the city a while back.

Not drinking so much is probably a way to avoid the despair, but where is the fun in that?

I'm a vomiteer rather than a sleeper so I never have this problem. But I know people who slept and ended up in Cambridge.

I used to know a female comedian who hosted a comedy night once a month. She and her partner lived in Morden for the sole reason that she has fallen asleep on the tube and got stuck there so many times that they figured it was easier just to move there lol

Chicago, too, particularly on Metra (the commuter rail network). The longest line is the UP Northwest line, about 63 mi/102 km to the far rural town of Harvard, Illinois.

Or, if you're heading to Indiana, the NICTD South Shore Line can take you all the way from Chicago to South Bend.

Crewe is a station of despair for the British rail network despite not being a last stop, instead in fact because it's something like the heart of the network. If you try to travel far enough across the island (especially from the north, I think) and you depart lateish or don't have the right tickets or enounter delays, the chances are excellent that you will be spending several hours overnight in Crewe. You can forget about finding a convenient and affordable bed, so instead you'll be slumped on a chair in the little waiting room, which at least is lit and heated, and feels like it's the secret heart of Britain. Or at least that's how it all still was the last time I was there, but I doubt anything much has changed since.

Crewe native here. It’s a big town rather than a small Mountain village, but aside from that it would be a similar experience to the article. There’s modern Best Western across the street. Pubs open until midnight or 1ish. Indian restaurants accommodate after hours drinkers and diners until the wee hours. There is a 24 hour McDonalds and some late night garages for supplies.

You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew That he was walking up and down the station;

Aw, Skimbleshanks.

Definitely most Australian cities. In Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth you'd be waking up in the middle of nowhere in most cases.

Or even worse, Frankston.

I've also (see my sibling here re: Morden) done this. Lived in Alphington. Woke up in Diamond Creek.

Berlin has this and it's Schöneweide. There is a light rail ring with two lines going in opposite directions... and one line going straight into the middle of nowhere. If you don't pay attention it's easy to end up there by accident.

But on the weekends the trains run 24 hrs a day, so schoneweide isn’t really a station of despair. It’s not even really that far out.

Even on weekdays there is public transport running with buses all night, and as far as Berlin is concerned Schöneweide is still pretty central.

I have a London-based friend who once woke up in a bus depot with the bus parked and nobody else around. Presumably the driver is supposed to check for anyone left on the bus before parking it and leaving it, but they didn't on this occasion.

There's an app for that.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnkSuyRV54

I wouldn’t want to end up in Chorleywood, near the north western end of the Metropolitan line, late at night. It’s a nice little village, but I suspect it would be pretty dead.

Drunk people on Vancouver's skytrain definitely do end up at King George (the terminus station furthest from downtown) if they fall asleep and miss their stop. The train stops running entirely at about 1:15 AM.

One of my favorite jokes from the British sitcom "Spaced":

Daisy: [answering phone] Hello? Oh, hi, Mike. Yeah, he's here, I'll just get him.

[to Tim]

Daisy: It's your boyfriend.

Tim: He's not my boyfriend.

[picks up phone]

Tim: Hi babe.

Mike: Hello Timmy!

Tim: Where are you?

Mike: Err, Sheffield.

Tim: What are you doing in Sheffield?

Mike: Fell asleep on the tube.

Tim: The tube doesn't go to Sheffield, Mike.

Mike: Yeah, I know. I, uh, must have changed at King's Cross.

A friend woke up in Leeds once. The main problem was the unexpected cost of a peak time ticket back to London the following morning, which is a lot for a student.

Can confirm. I used to live in Islington. I woke up in Morden very early one morning, head against the tube window. Sadness.

Milton Keynes (and a few other stops) on the West Coast Main Line function in the same way if you're unlucky enough to fall asleep on the last north-west commuter train out of London.

In the case of Paris, you would not really have that with the Metro which is confirmed to Paris and relatively immediate suburbs but with the RER (they share the same stations with the Metro) you can easily get off in the middle of nowhere (again - relatively, I am thinking about the south of Paris, mostly)

Moscow is a severe case. The lines are going radially in all directions from the city center 250-300km away, with your stop somewhere along the first 40 min of the journey.

Well, how to decribe it... Simply put: you don't end up in a clean and cozy Japaneese town, there are few shady taxis who will be ready to propose you a comfortable trip back for around 200-300$. There is no convenience store open 24/7. If you're unlucky to end up there in the winter, then it's probably -20C outside. There is one 24/7 ATM corner which is mostly occupied by the local homeless people – so the ONLY warm option left is to go for a shining 24/7 slots machines/gambling place and try to gamble what you have for a taxi money or just to kill time. I once spent a night like this in Tver, gambling ~10$ what was left in my pockets all night with minimal bets.