Paddington Memorial 10 Years On

Survivors and bereaved relatives stood together in silence this morning to mark the 10th anniversary of the Paddington rail crash.

They gathered at the crash memorial in Ladbroke Grove, west London, alongside Transport Secretary Lord Adonis with leading figures from the rail industry and the emergency services.

The ceremony began at 08.09am, the time when a Thames Trains diesel train leaving Paddington station and a London-bound high-speed Great Western train collided in 1999, killing 31 people.

Flowers were laid on the memorial stone which overlooks the crash site and bears the names of the dead.

A Great Western train, similar to one that crashed, passed beneath the memorial site on its way into Paddington.

Among those laying flowers were Denman Groves and his wife Maureen, from Gloucestershire. Their daughter Juliette, 25, was killed in the crash.

The accountant from Chiswick, was travelling on the Thames train which had passed through a red signal after leaving Paddington and crashed into the arriving Great Western train.

Network Rail (NR) chief executive Iain Coucher said: "I am here to pay my respects. This was an event that changed the railways. It led to a change in the mindset. You can never do anything other than put safety first."

Lord Adonis said: "Paddington was a terrible tragedy and one of the worst in the world's history. I am glad that lessons were learned from the accident and that railway safety has improved but that does not reduce the nature of the tragedy and the impact it had on so many lives."

Pam Warren, whose badly burned face came to symbolise the accident, took her first train journey in a decade to arrive at Paddington.

(GK/KMcA)