The weekend in Elstow usually sees jolly locals romping around the quaint, picturesque village walking their dogs or enjoying a pint at the pub. But on Saturday afternoon, the mood was more sombre.

“It’s horrible isn’t it. I hope everyone is all right,” said Nando DiGennaro. “It’s just a one out of a million thing.” The 45-year-old HGV driver is referring to the train crash nearby on Friday that has left the storybook Bedfordshire village, with its Tudor houses and lush, stony gardens, reeling. He said air ambulances hovered above the area into the evening as the scale of the tragedy became clear.

Taxi drivers told the Guardian they had driven stranded passengers all the way to London as they scrambled to return home.

From those onboard when the trains collided, stories emerged of the sheer shock and terror they faced. Brett Byatt, a teacher from Bedford who was on one of the trains, told the BBC’s Today programme he saw most people on his full carriage “bleeding profusely, or a situation where they couldn’t stand, or they couldn’t move their neck, and I saw a woman snap her leg”.

Another passenger onboard one of the struck trains, Dr Peter Knapp, said: “Suddenly there was an impact. I thought it was a bomb, I saw a lot of smoke and people on the floor, bloodied faces. A lot of people crying and screaming. In a video posted on social media, passengers can be seen bloodied and screaming shortly after the impact. “I managed to open the doors and squeeze out. I was in quite a lot of shock, my glasses had fallen off. We were in the middle of nowhere in a field,” Knapp said.

The crash between EMR services between St Pancras and Corby and St Pancras and Nottingham has left one train driver dead and nine people in a critical condition. In total 100 people were injured.

One Elstow local, who did not want to be named, was in the car with her daughter near the crash site when it became clear “something devastating” had happened. “I witnessed emergency services flying around and you could sense there was panic,” she said. “The sense of worry and anxiety of knowing something dreadful had happened was unnerving in itself.”

She said some of her neighbours were on that train. “Some really good friends of mine were on that train and have got significant injuries,” she said, including one with a head injury. Another friend onboard ran out of battery on her phone. “Her husband couldn’t find her until 4am. For him, it must have been tragic not knowing what happened to her.”

The woman said her friend’s son had full view of the crash site from his house. “There was loads of people throwing out water and food over the fence. They did everything they could to try and help those people,” she said.

Her daughter, like many other people in the village, regularly uses the EMR service. “There’s a sombre mood in the village. Everyone’s feeling emotional,” she said.

Another villager, who did not want to be named, was on an EMR train back from London after watching Les Miserables. He knew something was amiss when “one of my party started getting texts saying: ‘Are you OK?’”. Not long after, they all began receiving similar messages.

“It’s a commuter town and so many people use those trains. Even though it was commuter time thankfully it was a Friday,” he said. Nevertheless, he was concerned because “there was a Harry Styles concert and a lot of people from Bedford were going to that”.

He thinks the impact of the crash will be felt throughout the village and the wider area. “Our kids go to the local Bedford school. It’s inevitable that some people connected with the schools will have been impacted,” he said.

“It’s the classic shock of ‘it doesn’t happen to us’,” he said. “The trains are such a big part of local life. It makes everybody realise it could have been them or their children.”