When six of us (3 couples in their fifties) took the train from Orvieto to Florence and then back, one couple failed to get off at the Orvieto station (they traveled in coach class while the rest of us went first class). It was about 10:00 at night. It turned out that they couldn't figure out how to open the train door when it stopped in Orvieto. We stayed put for a while, but since the next train traveling north to Orvieto wouldn't be there for a couple of hours, we repaired to a trattoria for a late dinner and a bottle of wine. We went back to the Orvieto train station, but still no Paul and Mary. They had their own car, so we "knew" that they would eventually show up at our rented villa; on the other hand, they were not particularly self-sufficient in terms of language, knowing any useful telephone numbers (e.g., one of us had a cell phone but they didn't know the number and they couldn't remember the number of our villa, and since they couldn't speak Italian had no way of tracking down a number.

Long story short - kind of - we went back to the villa, one person waited up, the rest of us went to bed, and the missing couple showed up around 1:30 in the morning. They finally found a north-bound train from Orte and took that one.

What's my point? In some cases you simply have to let people fend for themselves. Of course if they never showed up I'd have felt very bad for them- LOL.

KC

I'd not set up a standard policy of "going back to where you last were" on this metro circumstance. If you get separated on a metro, for example, going back means you must usually exit the entire system and perhaps repay to enter on the other side (assuming you don't have a pass). In fact, you will probably have to pay two more times -- one to go back and then again to go forward.
I'm a big believer in everyone knowing where you are going, and then if you get separated to go to the next stop.
It's worked for us several times.

My husband and I encountered a woman who was frantically trying to get information from a person in the Paris metro. She was beside herself and the person did not seem to understand her english. My DH asked her if he could help, and she indicated she was from Prague and was seperated from her group on their way to Versailles. We got on the metro with her, showed her the route to take on the map, got off with her on the next stop to change trains and ointed her in the right direction before we got back on.

Lesson learned, don't rely on everyone else to know where you need to go.