Brush with death

A MOMENT of fate dictated the rest of my life. I was 17 and working in the West End when one night during a pea souper I arrived at Charing Cross.

The station was thronged with a crush of people barely able to move and I wondered how on earth I was going to get home to Eltham.

A train to Hayes pulled into platform six, which was on the opposite side of the station to me, and I started to struggle across the concourse thinking I could get off at Lewisham and walk home.

Suddenly, my own train was called at platform one, which I was close enough to board. It was the last train to get through before the Lewisham train crash in December 1957 (Letters), in which that Hayes train was involved.

I could have been one of the 90 people who were killed.

Mrs S. BRAGG, London SE18. MY FIRST child had been born the week before at the wonderful British Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Woolwich and I was expecting a visit from my husband.

By 8pm, none of the new dads had arrived and all the mums assumed the fog had held them up. The nurses knew about the Lewisham train crash, but said nothing for fear of worrying us.

Eventually, visitors began to arrive and the news was out. My husband’s train from London had been halted at Peckham and he had walked all the way to Woolwich. I often think of the victims at this time of year and what might have been for my new baby and me. BARBARA FRISBY,

Canterbury, Kent. I WAS on the stationary train just outside St John’s station with my then fiancée in the dense fog. Then came the wallop with the train coming down on the same line.

I was shot up into the air, cutting my head on the luggage rack. I opened the door to escape, but it was a long drop down onto the bank and I shouted out to my fellow passengers to watch out for the live rail.

People had been thrown out of the train: some were injured and others were not moving.

We climbed down the bank and went through the back door of a hairdresser’s. The staff were taken aback as they hadn’t heard a thing.

We are coming up to 60 years of marriage and still share our thoughts about this incident. CHARLES JOEL, Orpington, Kent.