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T it dawned on me my life was in danger came a couple of years into my 20s, as my adult life was unfolding. My best friend, Helen, and I were traveling to Blackburn to reunite with a former classmate who had recently moved there for work. Thrilled to see each other, and enjoying the thought of the social gathering to come, we chatted nonstop as we traveled by train from York.

We put our suitcases – packed with necessities such as wine bottles and my new pair of black clogs – in the storage compartment and settled down in a snug pair of seats. Roughly halfway through our journey, I was vaguely conscious of a bang. Then came another, now unmistakable. Someone cried out as our carriage was thrown up into the air in what felt like a dreamlike pace. In an instant, Helen and I were upright in the middle of the aisle, clinging to one another. Looking down, eyelids tightly closed, I anticipated the carriage to flip and explode, like in the movies. I recall pondering our families and friends getting the news. Then I heard the young girl weeping.

“Everything is okay,” I said softly, speaking with a rasp. “The worst has passed,” I whispered, mostly for my own benefit.

She was about seven or eight years old, and looked like she had no guardian. Her weeping jolted me from my stupor; now I could do something meaningful. I moved to where she was standing and gave her a reassuring hug. “Avoid looking back,” Helen called out, the warning came after the fact. I glimpsed a man with his face covered in blood. An enormous piece of metal had crashed through the window behind us. Subsequently, we found out a runaway digger had descended the slope and collided with the train, making the train leave the tracks.

Our car was lodged with its nose pointing upward. Then came the noise of sirens and a fellow passenger requested that I to hand the child over so he could help her out the window, while young passengers were extracted to waiting firefighters. A few minutes later, Helen and I were also climbing out of the train window and descending via a ladder down to the rails.

Back on terra firma – beside a freight warehouse in Pudsey – my body started to shake uncontrollably. My eyes scanned for the little girl and saw her being scooped up by her mum, as it transpired had been using the restroom at the time of the accident. A rescuer graciously recovered my clogs. One of the passengers collapsed on Helen’s case, causing it to burst open – but, by good fortune our wine remained intact. Once we had waited for thirty minutes, we proceeded in a free cab to Blackburn, accompanied by a young man and the woman who had damaged the suitcase. Our host was there, ashen-faced. She had heard there had been a derailment and a railway official had escorted her to an office and made her a cup of tea while she waited for news.

Displaying the fearlessness of young adulthood, we put the train crash to one side and carried on with our night out, which featured a memorable turn by Blackburn drag queen Clitheroe Kate. Not a single life was lost in the incident, despite the fact that several people required hospital treatment. Helen and I escaped with bruises and general soreness from the impact of being thrown forward in the carriage. The train had been slowing to enter Leeds station, which had been the crucial element in preventing major harm. The fact that nobody was badly hurt helped not to obsess over the “what ifs” but the child was the one who changed my outlook profoundly. Attending to her and soothing her shifted my focus outward and demonstrated the worth of focusing on others in a crisis. In the decades since, I have frequently pondered if she had any memory of the event, and how big a deal it had been for her.

Helen and I have remained friends for over 30 years and That location's name now symbolizes for our capacity to handle any situation, provided we have each other. Having her companionship during the accident created the sensation that I was shielded against the worst of the situation. The crash also changed my method of handling different emergencies, giving me perspective – and reinforcing the idea that, regardless of how terrible things look, it is invariably an honor to grow older.