Major Train Derailment

The general advice is if you break down on the crossing is to leg it. If the gates are down the train is not going to be far away. The problem with half barriers is some motorists are tempted to zig zag round them - but let's not speculate on that yet.

Partly true but FGW offer cheap first class ticket upgrades at weekends so there are more in First than you might expect...but yes there would still be more in Coaches A and B than G and H.

ITV NC now has Mike Pearse from Meridian News on the line from the scene.

Sky News first with the pictures. Although not much can be seen as yet.

Sky now have live pictures from the scene, though all you can see is flashing blue lights.

Sky reporter Derek Tedder is now in the area.

I can't get to a television at the moment, so i'm relying on internet websites to keep me informed, but does anyone know whether terestrial channels have run any news reports, or broken in to programing for summaries??

Also, how does everyone reckon this story is going to be handled through this evening and tonight?? Sky News generally have a very very skeleton staff on shift in the wee hours of sat/sun, bbc news 24 go with world, and itv-nc is generally pre-recorded isn't it??

I'm thinking, if this is as major as it sounds, with sky.com reporting 9 carriages de-railed and upto 140 injured, that the big guns, such as martin stanford will be called on to continue coverage when live continuity reaches the scene....

I don't think it would be a skeleton staff at Sky News now. Many people will have been called in. They may will get a more senior overnight presenter in later.

Sky.com/news have just posted this:

"Several people have died and many more are injured after a high-speed train hit a car on a level crossing and derailed tonight."

Sounds like the story is really rapidly just developing..........

Yep, its not as though its just a single person dead now either, police are saying several fatalities, and ITN saying 100 walking wounded.

I suppose the difficulty is when a story breaks at this time of day, how long you leave it until you start to reduce the level of coverage and send people home. Suppose it depends how much new information there is to report.

These explosions in Baghdad could complicate things as well..

FGW - run a Weekend First service in the second First Class carriage. This is popular with some elderly and families.

I was on the line last Monday afternoon too.

This is very disturbing news indeed. Days after the BBC's Whistleblower was shown as well. It's about bloody time someone took notice about Britain's Railways. Although this probably has nothing to do with maintenance, how many more Train crashes will it take before the Government take notice?

I wouldn't blame the railways as such for this kind of incident. It's more to do with the highways agency, and how they deal with ROAD safety.