A SURVIVOR of the Stonehaven rail disaster has told how she was thrown unconscious from her carriage after feeling the train ‘aquaplane’ as it left the tracks.
The 32-year-old passenger, who has not been named, woke up 20 minutes later covered in blood with severe injuries to her face and shoulder.
Speaking for the first time since the 2020 tragedy, the woman bravely relived how she heard ‘metal dragging along metal’ before waking up at the side of the tracks to find the carriage she had been thrown from ‘crushed’ beneath another and the wreckage on fire.
She still bears the physical scars three years on and says they are a constant reminder of what happened.
But after reading the Rail Accident Investigation Branch’s report into the incident near Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, she said she learnt that the only reason she survived was because ‘I actually went through the window’.
She said: ‘The investigators confirmed this because they explained carriage D, which is where I was sitting, was completely destroyed in the seconds after the derailment.
The woman was travelling in Carriage D, above, which was flattened in the impact
A disturbing close-up of the carriage from which she was thrown to safety
Shocking pictures of the disaster went round the world
‘I don’t know why I survived. But I feel lucky every day that I did.’
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, was reading a novel on her iPad and only became aware of what was happening on August 12, 2020, moments before impact when the ‘movement on the train felt weird’.
She said: ‘It just didn’t feel typical, it was like floating or sliding, like when you aquaplane in a car.
‘There was a strange noise like metal dragging along metal. I will never forget that noise.
‘I looked up at that moment and almost immediately I was thrown across the carriage.’
She described how she hit the window ‘head-on’ and the next thing she remembers was waking up at the side of the tracks with the train behind her ‘completely off the rails’.
She said: ‘The carriage directly behind me was laying across the rail track, crushed under another carriage,’ she said. ‘I later found out that the crushed carriage was the one that I had been ejected from.’ She recalled seeing fire coming from the wreckage and said her ears were ‘ringing’ so much she could barely make out sounds.
‘There was blood over my face from a head wound near my eye.
‘My clothes were also covered in blood and I could feel a bone sticking out my left shoulder.
‘I was just sitting in shock,’ she said.
The ordeal has left woman now fearing for her life every time she travels by car or train.
‘I’m totally changed as a person,’ she said. ‘Any movement and noise that are even remotely similar to the derailment continue to freak me out.’
She also admitted feeling survivor’s ‘guilt’ especially when she thought of Donald Dinnie, the conductor who was killed in the tragedy.
She said ‘Donald spoke to me about his partner, even joking that the weather would mean he’d get to finish early and was excited to get home.
‘He kept us all informed, thinking of other people the whole time and making sure we were all okay.
‘When I learned he died I felt an overwhelming sadness.’
She added that the permanent scar on her face was a ‘constant reminder of that day, but also a reminder that without it I wouldn’t be alive.’
But she stressed: ‘The train derailment was not an accident. It was the result of Network Rail’s absolute negligence.
‘Network Rail failed me and everyone else on the train that day.’
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk