FATHER-OF-TWO John Dunwell opened his curtains on the morning of February 28 and saw the first flurries of early morning snow.

He decided to leave his car behind at York and boarded the GNER train to London because he thought it would be safer.

Just minutes later, he found himself scrambling from the wreckage of one of Britain's worst railway disasters.

Now, more than nine months after the tragedy, Mr Dunwell, of Aiskew, near Bedale, North Yorkshire, is still attending meetings of a support group set up to aid survivors, as well as friends and relatives of the victims.

Mr Dunwell, who was travelling in the third carriage from the rear of the train, escaped with slight injuries and helped others climb back up the embankment to safety.

"When I got out, I walked into the field and looked back at the front of the train, which was in a crumpled mess, and then the significant shock hit me," he recalled. "Everyone has seen the pictures on television, but words cannot describe what it looked like when you were surveying it from just a few feet away."

Like other survivors, Mr Dunwell followed the trial with interest and saw his sympathy for Gary Hart ultimately turn to anger.

"For a large amount of time after the crash I was of a mind that it was a road accident that had tragic consequences and I didn't really have any ill-feeling towards Mr Hart. I believed it was just an unfortunate chain of events," he said.

"Because I survived it I suppose it is easy to take that point of view. However, the news that he had had next to no sleep that night, having wasted his evening away talking to his new girlfriend on the telephone, put a different perspective on it.

"My point of view now is that he was seriously negligent and was reckless with both his own and other people's lives."

While Mr Dunwell is coping well with the aftermath of the traumatic events, he has remained in contact with some of the families of the victims.

"There has been a succession of meetings and it has given me an opportunity to meet some of the bereaved families," he said. "There were many who weren't as fortunate as I was."