Network Rail Anglia
Clyde was hurt when one of the trains rolled over him.
Commuters in the UK are used to all sorts of reasons for train delays and cancellations, whether it be strike protests or leaves on the line, but a new issue arose on Monday (local time) – a giant tortoise on the tracks.
Clyde, a 50kg African spurred tortoise, had done a runner from a pet shop in Norfolk the day before, and had managed to crawl undetected more than 400 metres before ending up on the track.
Unfortunately for Clyde he had been badly hurt after being hit by a passing train east of Thetford.
Commuter Diane Akers photographed the distressed reptile on the tracks and tweeted to the railway operator: “There is a giant tortoise on the line past Eccles Road going away from Norwich it’s still alive but injured.”
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She later told the BBC that when she told a staff member at Norwich station about the tortoise, “the chap looked at me as if I was mad”.
“Then a police officer came along and said he’d seen my tweet.”
A fellow passenger had also tweeted: “’Train delayed because of a giant tortoise, too heavy to lift, stuck on the train tracks after having escaped from a local wildlife centre’ is not something I thought I’d ever hear from a train driver!”
Thankfully staff from Network Rail stopped trains for more than an hour and rescued Clyde, bringing him to a vet. He underwent surgery for a hole in his shell and the rail operator said he had successfully come through the operation.
“We are happy to report that Clyde is OK will be returning home soon; if a little shell shocked perhaps.”
The African spurred tortoise is the third-largest species of tortoise in the world, as well as the largest mainland species, and is native to the Sahara Desert and the semiarid grasslands and savannas of Sahel, which is quite a distance from Norwich.
