IT'S silent now, painfully silent. Looking south from a small road bridge outside the straggly village of Great Heck, the railway lines run straight and true until they converge to meet the steel grey sky on the horizon.

A string of coal trucks, huge hulks of wagons, queue quietly in orderly fashion on the lines, as if waiting for the nod to roll slowly under the bridge.

And then to the east side of the line at the foot of the bridge, lies the mangled, twisted, contorted wreckage of a train, and of so many lives.

It's silent now. The biting snow-wind drives whatever noise the rescue operation makes to the four corners of this sodden, flat piece of North Yorkshire, smearing all it touches with the stench of spilled diesel.

Standing in the silence, it's appalling to think of the sounds that rent the air and filled the bridge just a few hours before. The shriek of steel tearing into brickwork, ripping into wagons, smashing into trees, rolling into pieces down the embankment...

And the noises inside these coffin-shaped pieces of metal, the screams of fear, the howls of pain.

It's impossible not to think of the fragility of these frighteningly powerful pieces of machinery. When they'd left Newcastle, Durham, Darlington, Northallerton and York stations, gradually gathering momentum, they'd have seemed invulnerable, unbreakable, unstoppable.

But from the bridge outside Great Heck you can see how their pipes snap, how their windows smash, how their sides tear, how their chassis buckle, bend and then break. You can see how weak they really are, seemingly no more than tin cans that you crush in your hand before lobbing thoughtlessly into the recycling bin.

Those giant wheels that scare children witless as they power through a station, threatening to suck them along with them, were shorn from their carriages at 125mph. Now, still shining from the line, they lie lifeless and pathetic like leftover toys at the end of the day. They pile up against a stout tree or sink deep into the boggy field.

From the wreckage, it is possible to make out that this was once a train. Above the "Route of the Flying Scotsman" logo, there's the orange GNER line running down the sides of the dark blue carriages like an ugly gash in badly bruised flesh. The line wobbles along the side of coach B and lurches drunkenly into the field along coach D. It loses all definition as it reaches coach H, a carriage without right-angles, its corners shattered like a rotten shed in a hurricane.

And then there's a gap. Coach M stands utterly disconnected, its undercarriage gone. It looks as unnatural as a man who's been cut off at the knees. It's burnt out, bombed out, smashed up.

The orange line then sprawls back up the embankment along what is probably the buffet car which has had its roof opened to the elements as if it were a sardine can. On top of the buffet car rests another carriage. Upside down at 45 degrees, its soft steel underbelly is horribly exposed to the snow flurries.

But the eye is drawn back to where the orange line stops, to that gap between coaches H and M. Lost amongst the carnage in the field, there's an overlooked mess of scrap metal no more than waist high. It just looks like any other piece of tinny debris that is scattered liberally around the field, its former purpose unfathomable.

It has no shape and no colour - except there's a tell-tale suggestion of an orange line, concertina'd into almost nothing, that is running through it. It suddenly, horrifyingly, dawns that this too was once a coach. This too once had people standing tall in it, grabbing hold of the grey headrests as they made their way back from the buffet with their early morning cups of coffee...

It is impossible to believe that any one of them got out of this coach alive.

A rescue worker in a fluorescent jacket flexes at the knees and jumps easily off the heap of scrap.

He's one of a hundred or so scrabbling through the wreckage. They work quietly and professionally and for a while it's reassuring to reflect on how much skill and equipment the emergency services have thrown so quickly at this disaster. If anyone was in there, they'd find them, they'd save them...

Having landed in the mud, the rescue worker runs to the collapsed coach H. Paramedics emerge from its contorted shape, carrying a stretcher. Covered by a red blanket, the stretcher is dashed towards the waiting RAF helicopter on the far side of the field.

It swings crazily on the gale, summoning the energy to lift from the ground, and as it clatters over the road bridge it cruelly shatters the silence of this awful metal grave at the journey's unforeseen end