Train Crash

Date: 9/19/2019

It was a Friday morning, I decided to head to the Ruislip Lido Railway as opposed to work. I arrived around 7:15am and would stick around for a bit before deciding if I would go or not. Despite only being a miniature railway, our platforms and facilities were life sized and nowhere near the Lido (although there was a lake next to the platform). For whatever reason there was also a through platform at this station in which I was told a rail tour would go through shortly, an old steam train! Excited for it passing I said I'd go and record it. I headed on down the platform after making myself known to the society members, standing in the roofed sheltered area. I spotted a steam loco on the right and soon to pass through the platform so decided to grab my phone to record it go past. As I was grabbing it I then spotted a second steamer on the left side going right. Perfect, a double video! I tapped record and the video started as soon as the first train (orange in colour) passed in front of me. The camera started zoomed in, but I quickly corrected this. As I started recording the second train as they crossed paths, panning the camera along, I noticed that the first train was actually changing points and the second train was heading straight into it! Either the train was breaking but couldn’t stop in time or the drivers never noticed it, but the loco slammed into the crossing passenger carriages causing a rather large explosion that ripped through the train. Absolutely stunned I stopped recording and checked my phone to see if it was all captured - Other than a slight extra panning on the collision it all was - I quickly put my phone back into my pocket and looked for a fire extinguisher. Both train sets were absolutely destroyed. There was a gloomy silence, no noise from within the train and all people outside not making a sound. Everywhere you looked both inside and outside the sheltered area was fire and wrecked ash-covered train parts. I found an extinguisher further up the platform towards our mess hall and jumped down onto the tracks. I checked with Matt Thomas if I was using it correctly with a quick burst before spraying down a detached panel on the floor with some paper and documents on fire. As soon as I realised I wouldn’t be helpful in this situation, I headed down to the group of society members standing outside the mess hall looking around in disbelief while not saying much. On my way down I did see one survivor walk out of the wreckage, a middle aged blond haired woman, but other than her I didn’t spot anybody else. There were groups of people entering the carriages and looking inside, but there didn’t appear to be much hope. I did think to myself that I didn’t particularly want to see any bodies on that day, so decided to not take a closer look. Standing with the guys, they did have a passenger manifest of the people on the train, we took a look at a 92 year old man who we commented survived a lot (his photo was him sitting in a chair wearing his veteran medals) but was sadly lost in this crash. In all only three people inside both trains had survived, everybody else had perished. I mentioned that I had recorded the whole thing to which I was told to save it for later. By this time it was 8:45am, meaning I had the choice of either sticking around and helping with the cleanup or heading to work. I chose to leave the site. I arrived at work around 9:12am, slightly late but given the circumstances I wasn’t going to beat myself up over it (I’m usually late anyway). As I was walking to my computer, the sister of Rose caught up with me and we had a chat. I hadn’t seen Rose in a fair while and she seemingly disappeared from social media so I asked how she was. I never got a straight answer so I decided to talk about the crash earlier. I never got a chance to rewatch the video properly and I was still fairly shaken so I decided to show it to her. Watching the video closer myself, I did also notice that one of the locos (maybe the rear of the first steam train) was an electric pantograph train which did spark badly when being knocked off the track.