Yesterday evening (Saturday) a Great Western Adelante Class 180 travelling from Exeter to Paddington caught fire near Frome in Somerset. My train, Portsmouth to Cardiff, was hi-jacked as a rescue train to collect the stranded passengers, who'd been there in the cold and dark for three hours. We dumped all our passengers at Westbury and headed empty to where the 180 stood in the middle of nowhere, not knowing quite what to expect. As it happens it was swarming with Fire Brigade, Police and Network Rail managers and was floodlit. All the passengers had to be helped one at a time down a ladder on to the track, walk along the ballast and then climb another ladder on to our train.
When it was finally all set up, a fireman brought the first passenger up to our ladder. It was one of our local trainspotters in his dirty black t-shirt with all the badges and clutching his Tesco carrier bag. He had a huge grin on his face and said "158789! This is one of the new ones, isn't it?"
I just laughed out loud and knew he belonged in this thread.
Ian
