Lady Tanni Grey-Thompson says she was forced to crawl off a train last night when rail staff failed to come and help her.
The gold-medal winning Paralympian, 54, said she arrived into London King’s Cross station around 10pm yesterday and there were no workers there.
She had initially been posting on X, formerly Twitter, about her journey on a London North Eastern Railway (LNER) train into the capital from Leeds.
The wheelchair racing champion, who is now a House of Lords Baroness, was on the 7.45pm service and had praised rail staff who kept checking on whether or not she needed food.
The train got into the station just after 10pm, and she posted: ‘Hey LNER my train has arrived at KGX and there is no one to get me off.’
And just minutes later: ‘Cleaning crew are on board.’ And then: ‘Cleaning crew are now leaving the train!!!!’
The Baroness continued posting, desperately trying to find out who could help her.
She wrote: ‘LNER who do I need to call to get off this train!!! It got to KGX 10 mins ago!!!!!’
At 10.24pm, about 20 minutes after Lady Tanni arrived into King’s Cross, she said she’d had to crawl off the train.
She posted on X: ‘Well I’ve just crawled off.
‘At 22.17 (train got in at 22.02) I decided to crawl off. Had to move all my stuff onto the platform. Member of cleaning staff offered to help. They’re not insured.’
has contacted Lady Tanni for further comment.
LNER has this morning apologised, and said it’s probing the incident.
A spokesperson said: ‘We are sorry to understand there has been an issue at London King’s Cross station on Monday evening.
‘We are in the process of investigating this and are in contact with the customer directly.’
LNER’s Managing Director David Horne also replied to Lady Tanni’s post, saying: ‘My sincere apologies for this Tanni.
‘Something has clearly gone wrong here and we’ve let you down. We’ll investigate what went wrong and share the details.’
But the situation was met with fury online.
One person wrote: ‘This is awful, so sorry to hear this. Did the onboard team just run away (I presume there were staff)? Even station staff should have done a walk through as the train terminated.
‘Awful Tanni, so sorry – disgraceful from LNER, not good enough.’
Another said: ‘Geesh – that is disgraceful. What are you going to do about this LNER?
‘What changes are you going to make to ensure that no wheelchair user is left abandoned on one of your trains?’
One other said: ‘LNER This is disgusting! Why didn’t your crew do a walk through to make sure all passengers had safely disembarked?
‘Appalled that Tanni was left in this situation.’