Driver's actions

This is London website on 3 March 2007

The driver who survived the Cumbria rail crash has revealed for the first time how he desperately tried to stop the train after coming round from being knocked unconscious.

Iain Black, 46, told friends how he was catapulted out of his seat and hit his head on the roof when the Virgin Pendolino 'tilting' train hit faulty points at 93mph before being derailed and plunging down an embankment at Grayrigg, near Kendal.

With blood pouring down his face, Mr Black - a former policeman - came round, crawled back on to his seat and applied the emergency brakes in an attempt to avert the accident, in which Margaret Masson, 84, from Glasgow, died and 100 people were injured.

He told friends visiting him in the Royal Preston Hospital: "I am so sorry somebody died. I did my best to stop but there was nothing I could do."

In fact, the brave driver was unaware that as he tried to apply the brakes to the packed train, its automatic braking system had activated after a brake pipe was severed by the rogue points, which had nuts and bolts missing from track stretcher bars connecting sections of rail.