“When I went to see what had happened, I found the crane sitting on a passenger train with three carriages,” said Mitr Intrpanya, 54.

“The metal from the crane appeared to strike the middle of the second carriage, slicing it in half,” he added.

The crane was being used in a $5.4bn (£4.27bn) Thai-Chinese project to connect Bangkok to China’s southwestern Kunming city via Laos. Work began in 2017 and was expected to be completed by 2028.

Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn, Thailand’s deputy prime minister and transport minister, ordered an investigation into the cause of the collapse.