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LONDON - One person was killed and eight seriously injured when a high-speed London-to-Glasgow train was derailed in northwest England today, rescue services said.
Rescue services were for a time unable to reach many of the 180 passengers trapped in train carriages because of live power lines on the track. But a spokesman for Virgin Trains said later all had been taken off the train.
A spokesman for Royal Lancaster Infirmary said: "We have had five severe casualties admitted and I can confirm one death."
A spokesman at the Royal Preston Hospital said 12 casualties had been admitted there. Three were critical.
"You were suddenly aware of a jolt and the train started swaying really quite dramatically," BBC executive Caroline Thomson, a passenger, told BBC News 24 Television.
She said the train then flipped over and came to rest on its side.
"The emergency vehicles are coming up and there are a lot of flashing lights. One carriage is lying quite dramatically ... off the line," she said from the scene, in farmland near the town of Kendal on the edge of the Lake District.
RAF helicopters were ferrying the injured to hospital.
The cause of the derailment was not immediately known.
The train was travelling from London's Euston station to Glasgow and that the ambulance service first got reports of the incident at 8.16pm (9.15am NZT), said Claudine Shacklock, a spokeswoman for the North West Ambulance Service
Virgin Trains is 49 per cent-owned by British bus and train operator Stagecoach Group Plc and 51 per cent by Richard Branson's Virgin Group.
- REUTERS
