Sheffield trains: Stunned rail passenger told journey to Sheffield will take more than 2,000 years

But one passenger was stunned to be told that his journey to Sheffield would take more than 2,000 years. Twitter user Alex @crudengold shared a screenshot from the Trainline website’s Live tracker service showing him that his trip would supposedly take 17,724,422 hours and 17 minutes, with just the one change, via CrossCountry. The Trainline did advise that there was disruption, with an ‘amended’ CrossCountry service in operation and trains likely to be ‘extremely busy’, but even so, a journey of more than 2,000 years is a little excessive.Sharing the screengrab, Alex wrote: “I knew the trains were going to be a problem today but the Trainline is telling me my journey to Sheffield is going to take over 2000 years.” He said he was travelling from Leamington Spa to Sheffield and had searched for trains at about 11am that day. His tweet about the planned journey on Tuesday, December 27, quickly went viral, getting more than a million views and 24,000 likes.

Lots of people saw the funny side, including the Trainline, which responded: “2,021.99 years? You could finish War and Peace (a few times), reorganise your junk mail (once), relax after Christmas with the family (for the last thousand).”

One Twitter user joked: “I live in Sheffield it’s nice but not worth travelling for that long to see. Besides, it might have changed a bit when you arrive.” Another commented: “When you get here not much will have changed but we will all be living under water. Again.” Some people were able to look on the bright side, with several responses stating that despite the long journey time the fact there was only one change was a relief.

Asked about the glitch in the system which resulted in such a long estimated journey time, a spokeswoman for the Trainline said: “It's possible this is due to an error in the data we receive on delayed trains which happens on rare occasions and lasts temporarily until the train's departure time is reconfirmed. Our tech team are working on a fix which will prevent this from happening in future.”

Those wondering if Alex ever made it to Sheffield will be glad to know he did but only with a little help from family, who were able to offer him a lift.