A routine Thursday commuter and leisure trip between London and the coastal Sussex town of Eastbourne turned into a chaotic incident when a Southern Rail passenger service derailed outside the popular tourist destination of Lewes, southern England, leaving multiple people injured, British Transport Police has confirmed. Three of the train’s carriages overturned in the crash, which left two people with severe injuries and a further nine with minor harm. The train, which departed London’s Victoria Station bound for Eastbourne, was carrying roughly 150 passengers when it left the tracks.
Rob Bradley, one of the passengers on board, was traveling with his 6-year-old daughter when the incident unfolded. He described how the train began to sway violently as it accelerated, before the carriage he and his daughter were occupying suddenly jolted upward, triggering an immediate emergency brake activation. “Everything got thrown forward. My laptop, my AirPods, our bags,” Bradley told the BBC in a post-evacuation interview. “The train kind of skidded for quite a while before it stopped and only then when we turned around did we see that the whole back of the train — literally where we were sat — was open and there was smoke and dust pouring into the carriage.”
After the train came to a halt, Bradley saw that one of the rear carriages had flipped onto its side, sliding down a grassy embankment to rest in an open field below. Though Bradley and his young daughter escaped without physical injury, he witnessed other trapped passengers from the overturned carriages with visible blood on their heads and clothing. He added that a second passenger told him they had sustained lacerations after a train window shattered during the derailment.
Aerial footage captured at the crash site shows emergency responders including firefighters and paramedics treating injured passengers in the adjacent field, with a large response fleet deployed: multiple ground ambulances and three air ambulances were on standby to transport severely injured people to local hospitals. British Transport Police confirmed that all 150 passengers were successfully evacuated from the crash site within approximately three hours of the derailment. As of Thursday, authorities have not confirmed what caused the incident, and a full investigation into the circumstances of the derailment is ongoing.