Drama at the level crossing

Okay, here is the story of what happened on Thursday night.

Background info - I am scared of level crossings. I hate them, and one of my particular fears is getting stuck in a car on the crossing.

On Thursday night I drove into town to pick up Ram and a friend after a night out. In order to drop his friend home I had to cross north over the level crossing at West Worthing station. This crossing is notorius for being one where you can get stuck for ages as it is part of a complicated traffic light crossroads. As I was approaching the traffic lights from town to turn right over the crossing there was no-one in front of me and Ram urged me to hurry up so that I didn't get stuck at the lights. I didn't speed up of course, and just as I reached the lights they turned red so I stopped.

The warning lights went on at the level crossing, so I put on the handbrake and sat back knowing we would be there for a few minutes. As we were waiting I glanced idly over towards the crossing. The first barriers had come down. I couldn't quite make out what I was seeing, I said to Ram "is that a car stuck on the crossing?" We all looked over and agreed, yes it was, not really sure what to do. His friend said "it's okay, the barrier won't go down if there's a car on the crossing". So we waited a few seconds, and then the barrier on the other side started to go down. I was panicking even more at this point, especially because I thought that I could see someone in the driver's seat of the car. We really didn't know what to do. One of the people standing waiting was calling 999, but it didn't seem like there was enough time, the lights were flashing, siren going, and the last barrier was coming down. So Ram and his friend were incredibly brave, they leaped out of the car, ran on to the track (!) and with the help of another man they managed to push the car off the track just as the final barrier came down...the train came past a few seconds later...

Two community support officers appeared almost immediately (I think that they were on the train), and a police car arrived a couple of minutes later. Something had happened to interrupt the traffic light sequence, because my filter light was green but the barrier was still down. A few minutes later the barriers came up and I was able to cross the crossing, which wasn't easy because the car was just on the other side and there wasn't really anywhere to go. Luckly I had been first in the queue so I was able to cross. I managed to park on the other side of the crossing, Ram and his friend had to stay and talk to the police officers (they thought it was their car!)

The car in fact had been empty, someone had abandoned it on the track, although no-one else stopped to talk to the police. Surely someone must have seen something, anyway I'm sure that the crossing is covered by CCTV.

It was horrible, sitting in the car and know ing that the train was going to hit the car and not being able to do anything about it. And even more horrible seeing Ram running onto the crossing with the lights and sirens going and the barriers coming down! He said that he could see the train coming in the distance but knew he had some time (one of the problems with the crossing is that they put the barriers down well before a train comes!).

So now I'm even more scared of level crossings!