VON RYAN'S EXPRESS IN PEACETIME? A Milan train ends up in Zurich, without any help from Frank Sinatra.

The overnight Salvador Dalí train, which departed from Barcelona in Spain on Sunday, was scheduled to arrive in the Italian city early the following day – but it ended up almost 150 miles away in the Swiss financial centre due to a points switch error.

The train, run jointly by the Spanish train operator Renfe and the French SNCF, completed the first part of its journey without incident, arriving in Lyon as scheduled. As usual, it was part of a convoy including another train, the Pau Casals, which was destined for Zurich.

However, rail workers then confused the destinations, sending the Zurich-bound service towards Milan, and the Milan-bound train towards Zurich.

There's something wrong with this story. If the engineer with Swiss route knowledge inadvertently gets on the Italian section, he's not paying attention very closely. If he properly gets on his train, and the dispatcher gives him the wrong route, he stops short of the signal (or creeps up just enough to knock down the signal) and gets on the radio. The dispatcher, or if there's an interlocking tower, the leverman, sets the switches correctly (memo to journalists: in North America, we have switches, the British have points) and the train proceeds. The cars of a train are a consist, not a convoy. If the engineer is on the wrong train, there's nobody paying very close attention to the consists and the crewing at the station.

A spokesperson for the SNCF confirmed that an error had taken place in Lyon, without specifying the reasons for the mistake.

That makes sense. The rules examiner is not very happy, and the legal department might have some work to do. (Via Trains for America.)