was travelling between Manchester Victoria and Halifax. There were signalling problems, which meant that we were crawling along for about 20 minutes. I was sat near the front but facing backwards with a window seat. There were a few people kicking off at the conductor about the fact it was delayed etc, and it was a fairly noisy carriage.

Anyway, the signal issue must have been resolved because we rocketed away after Hebden Bridge, maybe even faster than a train would normally go. Suddenly there was an audible, sickly thud and the driver slammed on the breaks REALLY hard. People were thrown out of their seats, relatively violently. I quickly looked out of the window and noticed, to my horror, that there was blood splattered up the window, diagonally. I felt sick. The guy next to me just said 'oh fuck' and the train was completely silent. Nothing was said for what felt like half an hour (more likely 10 minutes). I don't think that the people at the back knew what had happened but a woman sat nearby picked up her child and rushed down to the other end of the carriage, covering her son's face from the horror that had unfolded outside my window.

I started thinking about my life and about how crazy it was that someone's life could be snuffed out so quickly and I just felt awful that whoever had felt the need to end their life would have done so, without receiving the help that they needed. The train began to roll slowly on, the 100 meters to the next station.

Turned out it was just a sheep and the driver just wanted to make sure that the train was ok after the impact. The conductor got out and was peeling bits of it off the side whilst also retching. Still, makes you think, dunnit?