A freight train driver stopped his locomotive to play the part of rescuer for a little lost pug which had run away from her owners the night before.
Poppy the pug had become frightened by a speeding car and 60-year-old owners Dawn and Ian Bain had been out searching for her all night long.
At twenty-past eight the next morning, Michael Jones was nearing Langham Crossing in his freight train when he described seeing a “flash of red” from Poppy’s harness disappear into the bushes near the level crossing.
“All of a sudden there was just this tiny little face just looking back at me,” Jones told the BBC. “She was trembling and looking down at the ground.”
He stopped the train and lept out of the cabin to collect the tiny dog who was happy to see a friendly face. Inside the locomotive, he called ahead to the next crossing at a town called Oakham that he had found a lost dog, and then turned his attention to feeding the little pug crumpets and water.
At that same moment, Mrs. Bain arrived at the Oakham crossing to ask the employee there if any dog had been reported on the tracks that morning, to which the worker in the box replied that not only had one been found, but that it was on its way to them at that very moment.
“My heart—it didn’t know whether to sing or stop,” said Mrs. Bain, still in her nightgown from the previous 12 hours of searching. “In comes this train with this beautiful man on, with Poppy sat on his knee. I cried, massively, and he cried.”
Poppy was totally unharmed from her ordeal, and is recovering from the shock of it all at home with her companion Tinker.