Must have been terrifying for driver to come up aginst that. Glad all is well Peter; all in all it seems like quite a successfully swift evacuation and resolution to the incident too.
Correct on all counts; although to the layman three hours might not seem very fast it's not too bad in the circumstances - particularly given that nothing could be done beyond an immediate initial inspection of the train as there were still cows running loose afterwards; they would have had to be rounded up before anything serious could get done.
As for the rest of it, it was obvious as soon as I felt the impact and juddering and saw the ballast flying that we weren't going anywhere in a hurry. It was immediately clear that we had struck something on the track although at that point we had no idea what. I did initially suspect we were off the road from the juddering, but I wasn't completely sure because after that it was rather smooth while the stop was completed ( we're talking seconds here ). Turns out it was one axle in the second carriage that was derailed; I was in the first carriage.
Immediately we stopped I said to my wife and those around us that we would likely be there for at least an hour. A while later the crew came through and when they said we were derailed, the first thing I said to my wife was that it would be at least two hours before anything happened. Not too far off the mark as it happens as the evacuation plan was pretty much known at the two hour mark. The rest of the delay was the time it took to transfer everyone across and then double check that the rear unit was good to proceed plus getting the necessary confirmations from the signallers etc to commence the move wrong line.
One unexpected side bonus - I was able to get my first two class 720 cabbings during the evacuation transfer.
Question: Is this the first time a 720 has been derailed?
