A SURVIVOR of a devastating train crash 25 years ago has spoken of a “dreadful day” she will never forget.

Former York schoolgirl Christine Quinn was on a train which collided with a van on a level crossing at Lockington in East Yorkshire on July 26, 1986, killing eight passengers and a boy in the van.

She was speaking ahead of a service being held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the crash which will take place at 1pm tomorrow, in Driffield Memorial Gardens.

Christine said she was on her way to a wedding in Hull with her one-year-old son, Craig, when the accident happened.

“I threw myself over the pram to shield my son from flying glass,” she said. “For this reason, I didn’t want to take him out of the pram, and a kind gentleman helped me to carry the pram up the Embankment.

“We were all in a state of shock. We were told we could telephone family from the phone at the railway cottage.

“We were all shaking and crying and didn’t know what to do or where to go but then buses turned up to take us on our journey.”

She said she met a young girl about 14 years old called Amanda, with whom she still kept in touch on Facebook.

“What a dreadful day it was,” she said.

“I still get emotional when I talk about it. My son is grown up now and is a Lance Corporal in the Household Cavalry, based in Windsor. I’m so proud of him – it could have been so easy to have lost him on that horrific day.

“It was a terrible weekend, one I will never forget.”

Christine lived in York as a child and went to Joseph Rowntree School, but has lived in Bridlington for 26 years.

Her surname was Beckett until she married, but she said that by a strange coincidence, one of the people who died on the train, whose name was on a memorial stone in Driffield Remembrance Gardens, was a Christine Quinn.