A woman lost both her legs in a train accident when she was 29-year-old, miraculously, even with the vast weight of the train crushing her, she survived.
But as it ground, belatedly, to a halt, the life Diana had known ended. She lost both her legs. One, severed above the knee, hung by a thread. The other was ripped clean off below the knee.
Just seven days after the accident, when she was still in the hospital, traumatized and heavily sedated, the rail company announced its intention to sue Diana. Its aim was to invoke a 100-year-old by-law and prosecute her for trespassing on the railway line.
My fight with what was then British Rail was worse even than losing my legs,’ she says.
25 years after the accident, Diana, 54, has written a book about her ordeal. It tells the story of her indefatigable battle against both disability and injustice.
Her story is one of triumph over both her injuries and the intransigence of British Rail, who paid her £634,000 after a judge found that British Rail was 70 per cent to blame for the accident.
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