Horror of Hatfield crash revealed

Survivors today described in their own words the horror of the Hatf ield rail crash disaster.

Solicitor Susan Stephenson said she was "convinced that this was actually the end". Sales director Karen Moore told the Old Bailey how bodies fell all around her and she thought "I might never see my little boy again."

The dramatic evidence emerged from witnesses in the trial of five rail bosses accused of the manslaughter of the four victims of the crash in October 2000. They were travelling on the GNER express from King's Cross to Leeds which was derailed by a broken rail at 115mph.

Mrs Stephenson, a solicitor for East Riding Council in Yorkshire, said she was sitting in coach F reading the papers with a pot of tea when there was a violent jolt and everything was sent flying amid a deafening crash.

"It was that sensation that these were my final moments, but they were not," she said.

Mrs Moore said she had also been in coach F but had walked into the buffet car - where the four victims who died were situated - to get a phone card for her mobile.

"The train gave a violent lurch and I fell over. I felt silly because I thought I had slipped," she said. "I must have hit my head... There was a ripping noise above my head.

"There was loads of debris then the window blew out, boom, and things flew over my head, like a trolley. I was looking onto the track - it was going very fast beneath me." Mrs Moore sobbed as she recalled: "I was thinking about my little boy and how I might not see him again. I knew if I didn't hold on I would be sucked out of the door - I thought 'I have just got to hold on, I just had to hold on'.

"The train came to a stop and I could see this pile of bodies on top of me. I wriggled my fingers and toes thinking 'you are not paralysed, you are going to be okay.'

"I could not feel my legs. There was an Indian gentleman half lying over me. There was a lot of debris and I realised my face was wet and I knew I must be bleeding."

Mrs Moore said the Indian man gave her a mobile phone to call her husband. "I was very calm, I said 'there's been a bit of a bump on the train - can you get me?'

"Another passenger phoned his father and started to cry because it was his mother's 80th birthday. I felt not in pain but quite numb. They were crawling across the top of the buffet car and a woman paramedic and a fireman came in.

"He said 'can you walk?' and I said 'I don't know'. He got me to the side of the train." She was taken to hospital in Welwyn for treatment.

Restaurant car attendant Philip Davies said he was "terrified" in the crash and has never been back on a train. "After this, Potters Bar and Selby I just thought I didn't want to go back," he said.

His colleague Beverley Adshead, who suffered severe burns and was in a specialist hospital for four days, burst into tears when shown a photo of the wrecked carriage.

Actress Anna Davies who, under her working name Anna Brecon played Lady Tara Thornfield in TV soap Emmerdale, said she tried to help other passengers including a woman on her back "with pain etched on her face".

The five defendants are: Balfour Beatty rail maintenance regional director Anthony Walker, 46, and civil engineer Nicholas Jeffries, 53; Railtrack London North East Zone Asset Managers Alistair Cook, 50, and Sean Fugill, 50, and LNE track engineer Keith Lea, 53. They have pleaded not guilty to the four manslaughter charges and a further count under the Health and Safety Act.

Balfour Beatty faces a corporate manslaughter charge and, with Network Rail (formerly Railtrack) faces the Health and Safety charge which both companies deny.

Earlier, Jef fries's counsel Jonathan Goldberg QC, described the defendants as "honourable men doing their best". The real culprit was the "botched and unworkable privatisation".

The trial continues.