I have just got up on a morning with frost white-over. I feel for the emergency services. It was beginning to freeze by evening yesterday, and -3C was forecast. I don't know how long they worked, but they are to resume the removal of bodies today. During the night, they have had a temporary road built to allow machinery and vehicular access. The bodies are being taken to an RAF base. Only now can the grim task of identification begin. Please keep the families in your thoughts.

It isn't so long ago, maybe only a few weeks or days even, that between Gowdall and Little Heck, the cluster of cottages and farms that straddle the A645 about a quarter of a mile north of the M62, there was a slow speed limit on the track which was in force for a long time. The embankment was seriously weakened by the recent floods, and had to be reinforced. I guess, from seeing them going over the bridge there, that the trains were going 30mph at the most, although it's hard to tell when you are in a moving car. The work is almost complete, but if that had still been in force the passenger train would only have been accelerating, not travelling in excess of 100mph.

Andrea