Weird news - Apologizing for being 20 seconds early

There are so many stories on the internet where services (flights / trains) get delayed for various reasons and the service provider sometimes apologizes, sometimes not and sometimes the passengers are left fuming without any information at all. So it seems weird when a service provider apologizes when the train leaves 20 seconds early - we are not talking about hours, not talking about minutes, but talking about seconds (contrast this with the case of fog when trains can sometimes be hours late in other countries such as India) (link to article):

A Japanese railway operator has issued a deep apology for the "tremendous nuisance" caused by a train departing 20 seconds early, surprising even a nation renowned for both punctuality and politeness. The Tsukuba Express train linking Tokyo and the capital's northern suburbs pulled out of Minami Nagareyama Station at 9:44:20 instead of 9:44:40. A spokesman told AFP the apology was issued because strict safety procedures were not followed. "What matters is not the 20 seconds... The point is that our formal procedure should be this: A sound rings 15 seconds before the departure, followed by an announcement asking for caution due to the closing doors, and then the doors shut," he said.

Weird news - Train goes on the wrong path, and then backs up

When you see vehicles on the road, there is always a possibility of losing the way, and getting to a wrong place. In fact, this happens often enough when a person is not familiar with the place, and can take wrong directions and end up somewhere else. After all, the way a vehicle can go is constrained only by the road surface available.
But consider the case of a train, the train moves on a track, so it can only go where the track goes; and if it steps off the track, it's mobility is very limited, almost not being able to go anywhere. It is people who move the connections between tracks that decides where the train can go, and so it has to be a human mistake if the train goes elsewhere other than where it was supposed to go.
So it was surprising when the passengers of a train found themselves going backward, and that was because the railways authority found that the train had gone off in a wrong direction and hence needed to be called back (link to article)

It was a good 6-7km before the error was spotted and the 12339 Coalfield Express started backing up slowly. Passengers knew something was wrong when they started going back the way they had come. Red-faced Eastern Railway officials admitted that the mistake could have led to a major accident. Train services have been badly affected in the east since morning due to dense fog.
It was 100 metres from Talit when station staff realized that the Coalfield Express had lost its way. The train was stopped at 7.30pm by "alert railwaymen", an official said. "There was no possibility of a head-on collision. However, had the train moved further ahead, its pantographs could have got entangled as it is a non-electrified section. It seems that those in charge mistook the Coalfield Express for some other train," an official from Burdwan Jn said.

Weird news: Drunk man tries to drive off with train full of passengers

Drunk driving is a major crime, with a number of countries having tough laws dealing with the same. A person convicted of the same can be fined, driving license revoked, and jailed (and all of these can also be applied at the same time for somebody convicted of the same). When a person is drunk, their ability to follow a rational course of action gets impaired, and in extreme cases, they can take any action. A drunk person starts doing something that the person would otherwise only think about, as can be seen in this example.
It is not normal for a normal person to start driving a train unless they have been trained in driving the train, especially when there are passengers on board. So what would you say to a person who gets drunk and tries to make off with a train loaded with passengers (link to article):

A middle-aged man, apparently under the influence, jumped into the engine of a passenger train and tried to commandeer it. Luckily, the man could not locate the accelerator and his journey lasted only about 50 metres before the train's two drivers and a posse of Government Railway Police (GRP) men managed to get inside the driver's cabin and halt the train.

Woman delivers child in train, and child moves out through toilet

A lot of Indian trains have toilets where the toilet is connected through an open pipe, with the contents of the pipe dropping onto the tracks. This situation gives rise to some weird happenings.
Consider the following case. A woman, fully in term, gets onto a train with her husband, and then goes off to the toilet of the train when she starts getting some pain. She delivers while in the toilet, and the baby actually slips off into this tube and lands on the track. And this is where the maternal instincts kick in, since the woman jumps off the train, and onto the tracks.
Finally the train is stopped, and people go to find the woman and her child, from where they are taken to the hospital, and finally they are all in good health (link to article):

In a case that seems to be straight out of 'Ripley's Believe It or Not', a woman delivered a child inside a toilet of a moving train and the newborn slipped down the outlet into the tracks but miraculously escaped unhurt.
When the train stopped, the passengers walked back to the spot where Rinku and her child were lying, they said, adding both were brought back to the train. A medical team attended on them at the Purulia station, when the train reached around midnight.
The mother and baby were referred to the Purulia Sadar hospital where their condition was stated to be out of danger, hospital superintendent Swapan Kumar said.

Droppings from train crossings

How many people have looked at train crossing, especially in the third world, where there is a higher concentration of people, and wondered about the metal plate that covers the tracks in these crossings. The reason why the crossings are covered with a metal plate is to prevent accidents; not the type where a train collides with something, but the type where a person used the restroom of the train when it is on a crossing, and the refuse drops below the train:

Ahmedabad: Two-wheelers come to a screeching halt at the incline when a train passes over Madalpur underpass, near Gujarat college. These riders are afraid of a spoiling their clothes with the droppings from the train above. If a train takes long, there is a near traffic jam with approximately 50 to 60 vehicles waiting on both sides.
This happens at least 10 times a day and the volume of the vehicles doubles at peak hours. The metre gauge tracks on the top don't have a cover to protect the two-wheeler driver from the disgusting showers.

It is simple task to ensure that a metal plate is available, but it sometimes takes some amount of media attention to ensure that such provisions are available.

Cat brings in passengers to Japanese railway station

In an interesting marketing spin, a Japanese company has used the cuddly pull of a cat to bring back customers to travel in trains. The company has been in a tight financial situation recently, and seems to have found an ideal solution to grow the business. So what does it do? It puts a nine year old cat in a railway uniform cap at the entrance of Kishi station, and revenue has actually grown by 10%. Cats are considered good luck in Japan:

All the nine-year-old cat does is sit by the entrance of Kishi station in a railway uniform cap and pose for photos for the tourists. Tama has done such a good job of raising revenue for the Kishikawa train line that she was recently promoted to “super-station-master”.
Appointing a cat to turn around fortunes makes cultural sense in Japan, where cats are believed to bring in business. People are snatching up postcards, notebooks and badges decorated with Tama's picture. There is even a ¥1,365 (£6.65) book of photographs called Diary of Tama, the Station Master.

If you click on the link of the article, you will see a cute photo of the cat.