Hi there,
I hope you don't mind me joining in the conversation as I'm not much of a train person but I was a passenger in the rear carriage of the GWR and I'm trying to make sense of what happened so stumbled on this forum. It's very hard to find anywhere discussing it factually. Certain things that are being announced are not lining up with my experience and I don't know if it's just because of the matter being a work in progress or if they're not being honest for some reason. Either way, even just reading a few of the pages has made things make more sense to me so for that alone - thanks!
Did you have any specific questions for me or would you like me to just run through what happened as I remember it?
A few facts to start:
I was in the middle of the rear carriage sat to the left, facing away from the direction of travel in the window seat. It was super dark so couldn't see what was happening outside but we were thrown about so much that I assumed we were rolling down a grass verge. I'd estimate there were eight people in my carriage including the three week old baby that the news keeps mentioning. There was a man in a high vis orange jacket at the very rear who was thankfully very calm, knew what to do and went straight into the rear cabin thing to alert the various services, kept us somewhat updated and told us to stay put (even when we started smelling petrol).
I got on at Romsey onto the second carriage, first carriage clearly had no rows clear, second carriage had one (not particular desirable) so I went through the third carriage (also only had one row free) and ended up in the rear. This is all socially distanced at all, but you can see why I'm very suspicious of the 93 total passengers announcement for both trains.
I'm 100% certain there was no derailing of our carriage, there was no horn sounding (I presume I would have heard it?) from the other train and we were in motion at the time.
I'm physically mostly fine and mentally have dealt with it and can see you're all just trying to work out the facts of it all. I have some specific timing of things as I was keeping my mum updated on matters, if that is of interest.
Do ask away and please don't worry about being delicate!