“Earphones off, put your phones away.” The railway staff in high-visibility jackets were serious about safety. They were evacuating hundreds of travellers from one stricken train to another. And that required barking instructions to passengers so they had no distractions from the task ahead.
Maundy Thursday had ended an hour earlier. The day before Good Friday is always one of the busiest on Britain’s railways. Besides the usual commuter traffic, plenty of travellers make long-distance journeys to their Easter destination. Many of them were wisely seeking to dodge the Network Rail engineering projects that temporarily gum up parts of the network.
The 7.35pm from Exeter via Bristol to London Paddington was fairly full as it pulled out from Swindon for the final stretch to the capital. But close to the ancient Uffington white horse, the GWR train struck an unfortunate animal that had strayed onto the tracks. I happened to be chatting to the train manager at the time. Our conversation, like the train, came to an abrupt halt.
“That was a sudden stop,” he said, and went off to investigate.
The collision left the train damaged and unable to continue. The train manager did a sterling job in keeping passengers informed while Network Rail staff were summoned and logistics for an evacuation put in place. Another train was fetched from a depot and parked alongside our own.
I have never experienced moving from one train to another before. I envisaged that some specially designed footbridges would be deployed, each rather like a ship’s gangway, from one doorway to another.
In fact, the passengers had to make their way down a metal step ladder to the track ballast. “Give your bag to the man there,” we were told. “Turn around and climb down the ladder.”
Three railway staff were on the ground to assist passengers as they climbed down one ladder and up another. Bulky luggage up to and including a bicycle was transferred across, too.
As you can imagine, this performance took some time. Everyone arrived in London four hours late, in the early hours of Good Friday.
We were lucky: some passengers suffered a delay twice as long.
The 6.30pm from London King’s Cross set off for the northbound journey to Edinburgh Waverley shortly before a lineside fire broke out at Knebworth, near Stevenage, which closed the East Coast main line.
Passengers sat and stewed for five hours before the line reopened. The LNER train valiantly continued north. It reached Doncaster still five hours late – just in time for a Network Rail engineering train to break down ahead, blocking the line.
When that obstruction was finally cleared, the train had to travel slowly through North Yorkshire because of an engineering “possession” of the fast line.
A sunrise that no one on board had planned to see happened as the train called at Alnmouth in Northumberland around 6am.
Eventually, the train arrived in the Scottish capital at 7.15am – just two minutes before the Caledonian Sleeper, which had taken the West Coast main line, turned up from London Euston.
Both these extreme delays were tough for passengers, but even more difficult for the railway staff who worked through the night to get everyone safely to their destinations. Good work.
Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you
