"Thomas meets someone who is suicidal."

Well, I don't think we can expect to see that story being told anytime soon.

Sir Topham Hatt, aka the “fat controller”, and his cruelty of walling up Henry in his tunnel as punishment are but two of the controversies surrounding the much-loved original Thomas the Tank Engine books, created in the 1940s by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry.

My journey on Wednesday

On Wednesday, I tried to catch a train to Birmingham at 7 a.m. for a 10 a.m. meeting, but the first train was cancelled, and the second one stopped in Derby due to an incident at Birmingham New Street. The stated journey time is one hour; I always allow for challenges.

The announcements eventually started to provide more detail and sadly confirmed suspicions. Someone was threatening to jump onto the electrified pylons. The whole of Birmingham New Street had been de-electrified. There were no trains in or out. Prepare to be delayed until midday. When the trains start up, the backlog will be awful and cause delays as well.

In my little first-class compartment (my ticket to 1st class was in the form of righteous indignation at missing my reserved seat on the cancelled train), there was a lovely gent who worked for the railway; he had an inside track on what was happening.

I noted that no one in my little compartment (7 people) commented on the outlook of the person who was contemplating suicide, the cause of our “inconvenient delay”. Not one person articulated a lament, the desire for a positive outcome, which I am sure they all had but could not articulate.

?The truth is that suicide, in the main, is not part of our assumptive world, and the majority of us do not want to acknowledge that it happens and can happen in our world. Is it something that happens to other people? Isn’t it?

Oh, what do you do for a living, "I see dead people."

As usual with these train journey conversations, after lamenting the delay and the inconvenience, the question is asked: What do you do, and what is your day looking like now that we are stuck in Derby?

?After delivering my usual “I see dead people through the eyes, tears and stories of the bereaved”, and that I often use these stories to educate people about grief, I went on to say I am due at a University in Birmingham to educate counsellors and welfare officers about grief and suicide on behalf of Cruse Bereavement Support. I can never be accused of wilfully missing an opportunity to evangelise about my grief work.

My opening salvo still did not provoke any conversations about the cause of our delay; the elephant in the room would not be acknowledged on this journey, no matter what, and that’s frustratingly understandable.

Soon enough, we started our journey, and forty minutes later, we were pulling into Birmingham.

I asked the lovely railwayman if he had an update, and he replied, “Oh, the bloke would not have died because we would have been delayed for a lot longer; I don’t think he did anything silly in the end, obviously just a cry for help!”

Sigh, the train journey may have been over, but the journey to understanding is thankfully ongoing.

Death by train is huge, the impact on everyone involved is huge, and the ripple effect is enormous and fundamental.

I know we will never see the storyline, “Thomas meets someone who is suicidal”, but part of me wishes there would be. The Ladybird Grown-ups books tackle all sorts of complicated issues; I can see them tackling this as well.

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The icebreaker for the morning training session was set because half the team had been delayed due to their train journey, and what followed was the most fantastic discussion.

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Thank you to all those who have empowered me to address the elephant in the room.