Laois woman’s engagement ring is back on track after train workers find her lost diamond

A LAOIS woman has been reunited with a precious diamond from her engagement ring, after it fell when her hand got caught in a vent on the train she was travelling on.

Aisling Kavanagh was undertaking her regular commute back to Portlaoise from Heuston two weeks ago, when she inadvertently caught her hand in the vent beside her seat onboard the train. Her engagement ring got stuck and when endeavouring to prize it out, the diamond from her solitaire engagement ring became dislodged and fell into the vent.

Feeling helpless, Aisling disembarked from the train at Portlaoise, where she was collected from the station by her husband, David. She was distraught about losing the stone from her engagement ring, which she was understandably very emotionally attached to. Figuring that the stone had gone through the vent and out onto the track, there was no hope of ever finding it again.

She told one of her colleagues at work, who happened to live next door to an Iarnród Éireann, employee, who works in the mechanical engineering section. He advised that the vent does not go straight out onto the track and all may not be lost.

He asked Aisling to draw a diagram of where she was sitting and which carriage she was on on which particular service. When that train was in for an examination last Thursday, he and his colleagues took apart the vent and lo and behold, out fell the diamond!

Aisling was overjoyed. Speaking after she found out that her diamond had been recovered, she said: “I was so upset when I lost the stone out of my engagement ring, I really thought it was gone forever. The amount of effort that these people went to reunite me with it has restored my faith in human kindness”