Man reunited with wedding ring after railway drop

A man has been reunited with his wedding ring after losing it on the railway, a week before his first anniversary.

Ben Harris had been walking through Lichfield with his wife Daisy, their 11-month old son George and friends when he took off his jumper and the ring came loose.

He was left watching in horror as it dropped "in slow motion" from the Sturgeons Hill footbridge near Lichfield City station and disappeared into vegetation at the side of the tracks.

Mr Harris said he owed "a beer or two" to Network Rail worker Mark Samson, who had been days away from celebrating his own 32nd wedding anniversary when he found the missing ring.

It was getting covered in greenfly from a nearby bush that prompted Mr Harris to take off his jumper during the walk at the weekend.

Before he knew it, the wedding ring had come off his finger and was falling from the bridge.

"I could not believe what happened," he said. "It was as if the ring was dropping in slow motion into the nettles below.

"I thought it was lost forever and I was absolutely gutted - especially as it was so close to our first wedding anniversary."

Thankfully, a Network Rail team searching the area along the track managed to spot the ring in the undergrowth and it was returned within 24 hours.

Mr Harris said: "My wife would have killed me if it had been lost forever so Mark has saved my life! I definitely owe him a beer or two."

Mr Samson, a Walsall-based mobile operations manager with Network Rail's Central route, said it had been "like looking for a needle in a haystack" and he had not expected it to be found.

He added that Mr Harris had done the right thing in not trying to recover it himself, but reporting it to Network Rail.

It is the second lost wedding ring to be found on the railway in the West Midlands area after Eileen Lawrence lost hers at Bloxwich North station in 2018 as she moisturised her hands while waiting for a train.

Her ring was found by an eagle-eyed track worker after a search of the tracks the following day.

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