THE BBC admitted today it was "unfortunate" that a TV show was to broadcast a dramatisation of a rail tragedy in the same week as the Selby train crash inquest.

Survivors hit out at the scheduling of the BBC1 series Casualty, which returns on Saturday with a "blockbuster" two-parter surrounding a train disaster.

The BBC said today: "This latest story plan was devised a year ago to kick off the 18th series. It is entirely fictional and not based on any one event.

"It is unfortunate that the episode coincides with the inquest into the tragic Selby incident."

The statement came at the start of the second day of evidence into the tragedy which claimed ten lives, including those of six men from North Yorkshire.

Yesterday a rail expert told the jury that a train involved in the crash was probably derailed when it hit Gary Hart's Land Rover, which was on the track after leaving the M62 moments earlier.

Richard Billinge, a derailment expert at AEA Technology which used to be British Rail's research department, was giving evidence at the inquest at Harrogate's Majestic Hotel into the crash.

He said that marks on the rails showed that the front wheels came off the rails within five metres of the 06.00 York to London GNER service hitting the Land Rover which had come to rest partially on the line.

Earlier, vehicle crash police expert PC Steven Shone, of Humberside Police, said that in his opinion the train was derailed by a piece of metal from the Land Rover.

He said the front of the vehicle "disintegrated" in the collision, its engine was thrown on to the railway embankment and part of it hit a bridge nearby. The rest of the Land Rover turned round one-and-a-third times as it was propelled forward and off the track.

He thought that a piece of the vehicle landed in such a way that it came between the train's wheels and the rail, but could not say which piece.

Mr Billinge said the GNER train was braking after the collision and would normally have come to a stop still upright.

However, because the front wheels had come off the track, part of the front of the passenger train was directly in the path of the coal train and the two collided 640 metres south of the original collision.

Ten people died as the GNER train jack-knifed and part of it fell on its side.

The jury heard that the Freightliner train was new and the GNER train had had routine servicing just over an hour before it left Newcastle at 04.45 at the start of its journey to London.

The inquest continues.

Updated: 11:04 Tuesday, September 09, 2003