According to recent reports, more than 100 tourists, who boarded a night train that was destined for Milan, were given a shock when they woke up in Switzerland instead of Italy. Apparently this was all due to a points failure.

The Salvador Dali was sent some 175 miles off course after signalers split the train and mixed up which carriages to send to Zurich and which to Milan. Thus, the 135 tourists that were hoping to end up in the Italy fashion capital were instead greeted by the skyscrapers of Switzerland’s financial capital.

The trip itself all started back on Sunday when 300 passengers boarded the sleeper in Barcelona. Early on Monday, the train finally arrived at the French city of Lyon, but this is where things went wrong. Signalers made a mistake during the points switch.

The Spanish rail authority Renfe blamed French train operators SNCF. They said that they have to ask them why this went wrong at all.

At Geneva, Swiss rail workers finally realized the error that had been made and then finally redirected the Milan train to Zurich. Here passengers were transferred to a replacement coach service to reach the right destination. Passengers destined for Zurich were reroute back to Lyon. From there they continue to the Swiss city. They did make it to their destination, but they were some four hours behind schedule. All of the people were promised a refund for the mix up.

Right now the travel industry cannot afford more mix ups like these. Not only does this send a bad message to passengers, but it’s hard for train operators to make money if they have to continuously give it back to their passengers for making simple mistakes.