IT may have been fate which drew a remarkable woman into a terrible drama on a railway line in Kidderminster, but it was something else which was witnessed as the horror unfolded.

Reina Moreton's intuitive reaction to seeing a bike leaning against a bridge illustrates all that's best about one human's primal concern for another - and it speaks volumes for the modest mother-of-two.

In short, everyone who reads her story today should be asking themselves if they would - or could - have done the same.

If most of us found ourselves in that position and paused, we'd find it very difficult to take the next step, the right one which leads to uncertainty, at best, and puts our own lives in peril, at worst.

After trusting her instinct, she could have handed the situation over to the police officer who arrived on the scene as she did and found a badly-injured man on the line.

He, after all, had the discipline that comes with training and experience to call upon. She did not.

It doesn't take much imagination to realise what she must have felt like as she attempted to save the man.

"My heart was in my mouth, but I couldn't leave him," are the most powerful words in today's paper.

But it didn't stop there. With no hope of carrying the man back to the road, she stayed with him in his impromptu ambulance ride, via train, towards hospital, all the while attempting to resuscitate him.

It seems to us that, sincerely though it was intended, the Certificate of Commendation which Reina has received from the county ambulance trust is scant acknowledgement for her courage.

As readers may remember, Worcester mum Sandra Rafi received a Royal Humane Society award this summer for trying to save the life of a man who'd fallen from an M40 bridge.

Modesty may forbid Reina from saying that her actions deserve the same. But we'll say it for her. The whole community should be proud, and grateful for what she has done.