A GNER train flashes past, a dark blur with an orange streak speeding through it.

The train shatters the silence, its wheels so big and powerful and unstoppable, its carriages so vast and metal and unbreakable.

It clatters under the small road bridge and disappears northwards. The track whistles in its wake, and then silence returns to the pockmarked field at the bottom of the embankment.

Margitta Needham's eyes are squeezed shut to keep out the awful noise, and she is trembling. Her husband Barry, 40, was one of the ten people who died in this field at Great Heck exactly a year ago when a 117mph GNER train struck a Land Rover on the line and was pushed into the path of an oncoming freight train pulling 1,600 tonnes of coal.

"I'll always remember how we met in New York," Margitta says eventually. "It was so romantic. I never thought it would end like this, such a needless death.

"I always have an image before my eyes of the World Trade towers crumbling, and my life crumbled like that." They had been married nearly 17 years, and had no children - "which makes it harder".

She is clutching a plaque that will go on a tree in the lineside memorial garden. She reads it for the benefit of the TV cameras.

"My husband Barry was a kind, gentle man who always placed the well-being of others before his own."

"And that's so important," she continues, with a reference to the Land Rover driver who fell asleep at the wheel and started the catastrophic series of events. "It's just contrary to what Gary Hart did. His behaviour was just selfish."

Margitta, who lives near York, is one of 250 relatives gathered to mark the anniversary with a service of dedication for the new memorial garden.

The garden overlooks the field in which the GNER carriages, their orange stripes concertina'd into nothing, came to rest at their journey's unforeseen end.

Now only the pockmarks in the field remain from that terrible day, the deep gouges a reminder of how huge steel train wheels were ripped off and thrown down and how long carriages full of people were scattered about as if part of a child's toy set.

The lineside scrubland has been cleared and grassed, and wood chips tumble down the bank of the memorial garden. A wooden windchime swings from a branch and ribbons flap on the cellophane wrap of bouquets of flowers tied to the new fencing.

"In memory of those who travelled no further in life," says one of the cards attached to a bouquet.

Even the smell, the stench of spilled diesel, which permeated every corner of this sodden patch of North Yorkshire a year ago, has gone. That stench had been spread on a cruel snow-wind which spat spiteful squalls of hail into the faces of the rescuers clambering the wreckage. But now, although chilly, there is a hint of warmth in the spring sunshine as the buglers' Last Post breaks the minute's silence. The mahonias in the memorial garden are in flower, and yellow and purple crocuses are pushing hopefully through the wood chippings.

"It's back to a green field now rather than the twisted metal, so there's hope for the future," says Judith Cairncross, from Whitley Bay, whose brother Ray Robson was the conductor on the GNER train.

"It's so important for the place of carnage to be marked with something peaceful," says Margitta. "It's as if hope is growing out of it.

"Out of my rubble something good must come. I'm hoping for more awareness on the issue of sleep. Drink-driving and drugs-driving have had attention and now we must focus on drowsy driving and sleep-deprived driving."

Her Barry had had her passport and birth certificate with him on his last journey. He was taking them to the solicitors before they exchanged contracts on their new house.

"He was full of life and fun," she says. "So strong, so healthy and we had so many plans."

A year ago, those plans included an early night so Barry could catch the early East Coast Main Line train from Newcastle.

"It was to be the last night I spent with Barry because while we were peacefully sleeping, Gary Hart was already on the phone and the horror was already building up," says Margitta.

"I miss my husband so much." And she starts to sob