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That instant it dawned on me I was about to die came a couple of years into my 20s, when life was really just starting out. My dearest friend, Helen, and I were headed to Blackburn to catch up with a former classmate who had recently moved there for work. Overjoyed at the reunion, and enjoying the thought of the upcoming weekend of fun, we chatted nonstop as we traveled by train from York.

We put our suitcases – full of essentials such as bottles of wine and the clogs I had just bought – in the storage compartment and got seated in a comfortable double seat. Approximately 50 minutes after starting our journey, I was faintly cognizant of a bang. Then came another, which could not be dismissed. A woman screamed as our carriage was lifted off the tracks in what felt like a dreamlike pace. In an instant, Helen and I were upright in the middle of the aisle, holding each other tight. With my head lowered, eyelids tightly closed, I waited for the carriage to roll over and burst into flames, like in the movies. My thoughts turned to our relatives and companions getting the news. Subsequently, there was the little girl crying.

“Everything is okay,” I said softly, my voice sounding croaky. “It's finished now,” I stated, mostly for my own benefit.

She appeared to be seven or eight, and looked like she had no guardian. Her sobbing snapped me back to reality; this was my opportunity to be useful. I moved to where she was standing and wrapped an arm around her. “Don’t look round,” Helen yelled, the warning came after the fact. I glimpsed a man with his face covered in blood. An enormous piece of metal had smashed through the window behind us. Later, we discovered a runaway digger had rolled down the hill and into the side of the train, causing us to derail.

Our carriage was stuck with its nose pointing upward. Following that came of sirens and a fellow passenger requested that I to give the girl to him so he could help her out the window, as kids were being rescued to emergency personnel below. A few minutes later, Helen and I were similarly exiting of the train window and descending via a ladder down to the rails.

Back on terra firma – adjacent to a storage building in Pudsey – I began trembling violently. I searched for the little girl and watched her mother gather her up, as it transpired had been in the lavatory during the incident. An emergency worker helpfully fetched my clogs. A fellow passenger plonked down on Helen’s case, causing it to burst open – though luckily our wine stayed unbroken. After a half-hour wait, we made our way in a free cab to Blackburn, with a teenage boy and the lady who had caused the luggage to burst. Our host was there, visibly shaken. She knew there had been a derailment and a staff member had led her away and offered her a hot drink while she anticipated updates.

Bolstered by youthful resilience, we pushed the derailment from our minds and carried on with our night out, which included a unforgettable performance by Blackburn drag queen Clitheroe Kate. Not a single life was lost in the incident, even though several people were transported to the hospital. Helen and I escaped with bruises and general soreness from the force of the sudden jolt in the carriage. The locomotive was decelerating to approach Leeds station, which had been the primary reason in avoiding serious injury. Given that nobody was badly hurt allowed us not to obsess over the “what ifs” but that young girl who left a lasting impact on me. Taking care of her and reassuring her shifted my focus outward and demonstrated the importance of looking outwards in a crisis. In the decades since, I have often wondered if she had any memory of the event, and how significant it had been for her.

Helen and I have stayed close for more than three decades and That location's name now symbolizes for our capacity to handle whatever comes, as long as we're side by side. Having her companionship during the accident made it feel as if I was shielded against the most terrifying aspects. The crash also changed the way I approach different emergencies, giving me perspective – and serving as a reminder that, regardless of how terrible things look, it is invariably an honor to get older.