Survivor of Ladbroke rail disaster speaks of the tragedy 25 years on --[Reported by Umva mag]

The Paddington train crash destroyed hundreds of lives after two trains collided in London – and its impacts are still felt 25 years later.

October 5, 1999, started as a normal day for hundreds of train passengers trying to get in and out of the capital.

But shortly after 8am, two trains collided head-on after one of them missed a red signal.

Some of the passengers were caught in a lethal inferno as the diesel-fuelled engines caught on fire.

The disaster – one of the worst train crashes in modern Britain – killed 31 people and injured almost 500 others.

This is the story of one of the survivors of the tragedy also known as the Ladbroke Grove rail crash.

‘I saw someone rocking back and forth with burned skin’

Jonathan Duckworth, a 41-year-old shopping centre executive at the time living in Stroud, had hopped on the London-bound train for a meeting – one of just around 15 times he travelled to the capital for work.

The dad-of-two had admired the ‘beautiful, sunny morning and mists on the fields’ when boarding a 6am train from idyllic Stroud, where he still lives with his wife.

But just as his train had nearly reached Paddington he heard a ‘huge bang, and then it immediately shuddered and slowed down.’

He told Metro.co.uk: ‘What got me the most at that instant was the expression on people’s faces.

‘Everything happened in slow motion and also so quickly. We went through a huge fireball because the diesel had exploded. The entire carriage was covered in orange heat, you could feel it through the blast.

On his right, he could see ‘people staring with white faces.’

‘It was like something out of a horror movie.’

It all happened in seconds, but the horrific memory will stay with him forever.

As the ‘shocked’ faces – passengers in the other train – looked back at Jonathan, the carriage ‘started to bump around,’ turning until it ‘finally came to a halt.’

‘Everything was on one side, it was a complete jumble of luggage and stuff, and it was quite dark because we went through the burning diesel so the windows were blackened,’ he said.

Fire crews arrived at the scene within minutes and they came face to face with mangled carriages and those who had managed to get outside.

Jonathan and others in his coach G had to ‘fight their way out’ after the door was blocked.

His first thoughts were that another train ‘would come and hit us,’ but he learned later all trains in the network had been stopped.

Across millions of homes, people were waking up to the news of the crash, including Jonathan’s wife who was on a school run.

His wife had heard of the crash on the radio, but she only found out he was okay after hearing his voicemail.

The group from his carriage who had escaped ‘relatively unscathed.’

They stood around the nearby carriage H which had caught on fire, watching as the fire brigade tried to gain access.

‘You could see the flames getting fiercer and you knew if there was anyone inside they had no chance. Everybody except one had escaped,’ he said.

He saw someone ‘rocking back and forth with burned skin’ and a man with looking at his fingers which had turned into ‘sausages.’

Although Jonathan escaped the incident with bruising and a short stint to the hospital, the effects of the trauma were long-lasting, forming into PTSD.

He went on to chair the Paddington Survivors Group which was set up in the months after the disaster, morphing into a rail safety campaign group over the years.

Around a year after the crash, seeing news footage of the fatal Selby rail crash on a meeting room screen made him shake and break ‘into a cold sweat.’

‘It was then I realised I was ill, and eventually I went to get psychiatric help.’

He said his life was ‘completely changed’ along with effectively ‘losing my career as it was.’

Jonathan does travel on trains, but he has to face the back and face the engine, and if he doesn’t definitely have a seat he won’t get on.

He continued: ‘I think it was very much a sort of get up and off you go – for some people that works and some it doesn’t.

‘For anybody involved in something like this don’t assume you’re right and take time. If you’re in a crash, once the bruises are gone it doesn’t mean the effects are. Especially with an insurance claim, make sure you absolutely are.’

The survivors and families of the victims are organising a wreath-laying ceremony and silent reflection open to the public in the memorial garden at Canal Way, W10 5AA on Saturday, October 5 at 8am. This is followed by a ticketed service of Remembrance at St Helen’s Church, W10 6LP from 11am.

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