THE wife of the driver who unwittingly triggered the Selby rail disaster broke down last night as she dismissed suggestions he had fallen asleep at the wheel as "rubbish".

Gary Hart's Land Rover and trailer careered off a motorway onto the East Coast Main Line, causing Wednesday's catastrophe.

But 38-year-old Elaine Hart insisted it was a tragic accident and he was not to blame.

At a news conference, Mrs Hart, from Lincolnshire, said: "Gary is a very traumatised and is suffering a lot of pain.

"He is more than willing to co-operate with the British Transport Police, but he has been asked not to comment at this stage.

"It was definitely an accident. He is very distraught. It is rubbish that he fell asleep at the wheel."

Mrs Hart said her husband of five years was undergoing counselling but was keen to see his family.

Police had earlier said that the possibility that 36-year-old Mr Hart fell asleep at the wheel was among aspects of the accident being looked at.

His vehicle was hit by a GNER passenger train, which was then derailed and wrecked in a collision with a coal-laden goods train travelling in the opposite direction.

Last night, police warned it could be several days before the exact death toll from the disaster involving the 4.45am Newcastle to London express is known.

As survivors battled to come to terms with the tragedy, the bodies of the 13 known victims were recovered from the crash site, just south of Selby in North Yorkshire.

But police said some areas of the wreckage had not yet been searched and it was possible more bodies could be found.

Chief Inspector Martin Hemingway, who is leading the recovery operation, said: "There are areas on two carriages and underneath some of the carriages we have not yet been able to search.

"It is possible more fatalities may be seen in these areas but we will not know that until heavy lifting equipment has been used to move the carriages."

He said that, nearly 36 hours after the tragedy, rescue crews could still hear the "unnerving" sound of mobile phones ringing in the mangled carriages.

Up to 100 people are thought to have joined the train at stops the length of the North-East and North Yorkshire.

Last night, 33 of the 70 people injured in the crash were still in hospital. Two were in a critical condition at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

The dead passengers are expected to be named today. But among the 13 known to have died was John Weddle, 47, who was driving the GNER train, and its chef Paul Taylor, both from Tyneside.

Mr Taylor, who was in his early forties, was named GNER's chef of the year in September.

A third member of the crew unaccounted for is guard Ray Robson, 43, from Whitley Bay, who has worked for the railway for 24 years.

Mr Weddle, who slammed on his breaks in a last-ditch attempt to avert the disaster, was a father-of-two, from Throckley, Newcastle. His distraught family were too upset to speak last night.

His ex-wife Jacqueline Dearden, 41, was comforting their two children Christopher, ten and Stephanie, 16.

Jacqueline's new husband, Brian Dearden, said: "The children are devastated, it is harrowing for them.

"John had been a train driver all his life since leaving school and this is a real tragedy."

Freightliner, the company running the goods train in the crash, said one of its two drivers, Stephen Dunn, 39, had died, but its other driver, Andrew Hill, also 39, was in a satisfactory condition in hospital.

Mr Dunn, lived just outside Selby and was married with two young sons.

He moved to North Yorkshire from Wiltshire to pursue his dream of becoming a train driver. His uncle, Cedric Truckle, said: "We are all devastated. He was a loving family man."

Tessa Lyon, 20, of Craghead, near Stanley, County Durham, should have been working in the buffet car on the doomed train, but was unable to get into work because roads were impassable. "It's been terrible watching the news and knowing my friends were on that train," she said