British Transport Police said Friday it was responding to reports of a train collision north of London, with other emergency services saying they were attending to the incident amid media reports of injuries.
“We’re responding to reports of a collision involving two trains in the Bedford area,” the transport police force said on X, referring to a market town around 56 miles north of England’s capital.
East Midlands Railway, which operated the train, said “emergency services are dealing with an incident between London St Pancras and Leicester.”
Unverified social media footage appeared to show two East Midlands Railway trains having collided, with one running into the other, and passengers pictured standing on the tracks beside damaged rail carriages. The trains appeared to have remained upright on the track, according to a video posted by CBS News partner BBC News.
There have been local media reports of injuries, but emergency services have not yet provided any details. Passenger Peter Knapp told the BBC that he saw “bloodied faces” and passengers that appeared to have broken legs. He had injured his own back, he said.
“I felt like I’d been in a bomb explosion,” Knapp told the BBC. He said there was “smoke everywhere” within the train carriages and that he couldn’t “imagine what the situation of the (train) driver is.”
East of England Ambulance Service said on social media it had sent “a number of resources,” including an air ambulance and a hazardous area response team, to a “major incident on the railway south of Bedford.”
Meanwhile, Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said its “crews are currently in attendance at an incident on the railway just south of Bedford.”
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was “deeply concerned” by the collision reports.
The rail operator Thameslink, which also serves the region, said on its X account that “all lines are blocked between Luton and Bedford… due to a problem under investigation.” East Midlands Railway said that trains to and from London St. Pancras have been suspended, with customers advised not to travel this evening.
Train collisions are relatively rare in Britain.
In September 2023, several people were injured after two trains collided at Aviemore railway station in the Highlands of Scotland. The crash happened on the Strathspey Railway, a heritage railway run separately from mass-transit public services, and involved a stationary carriage and another train in the station. One of the trains involved was the record-breaking, century-old Flying Scotsman, the first steam train to reach over 100 miles an hour, the National Railway Museum said.
In August 2020, an early morning service from Aberdeen to Glasgow came off the tracks, killing three people near the town of Stonehaven, northeast Scotland, after a landslip caused by heavy rain.The driver of the train, a conductor and a passenger died. Six other people were injured.
Network Rail — an arm of the U.K. Department for Transport — pleaded guilty in 2023 to safety failings at a court hearing and the public body was fined $8.4 million.