by Mick the Ram

Astonishing images have captured the moment a train with 350 passengers aboard burst into flamesand led to a mass evacuation.

The incident occurred near to Crum Lynne, Pennsylvania, on a six-car train which was travelling from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware.

Chaotic scenes followed as one of the carriages of the commuter service was engulfed in a raging inferno, in what must have been an incredibly frightening experience.

Conductors opened the train doors and instructed all passengers to disembark, a process which apparently took around 15 minutes to complete.

Firefighters were called to the scene and were able to bring the fire under control and thankfully no passengers were injured, although no doubt many were left shocked and shaken as they were ushered onto shuttle buses.

A spokesperson for the train company, Andrew Busch, was full of praise for both the quick-thinking staff for keeping passengers safe and those passengers themselves for managing to remain calm in the face of an alarming situation.

With regards to how it started, Mr Busch said: “We don’t know where this started, just that it was in the area underneath the train.”

Passenger Dnasia Buckner told how she began smelling smoke about 15 minutes into the journey. “We had to get up and relocate to another car and then we had to get up and relocate again and that’s when I started to see smoke coming from the side of the train,” she said.

Another passenger, Cynthia Kayati recalled: “I could smell a weird smoky, sulfury smell, but I thought it was the train, normal stuff, although it was getting really strong.”

Alvan Hurley, of Newark explained how as the smell grew stronger anxiety levels began to increase: “We got two stations down from here and then people were really starting to notice it and were starting to panic a little bit,” he said.

An investigation has opened and is ongoing, with officials checking if the fire started in one of the train’s engines.