TOM Fagg is haunted by the memory of the Lewisham train crash to this day.

The 77-year-old grandfather, from Orpington, was travelling with a friend to Tonbridge on the doomed 4.56pm service from Cannon Street to Ramsgate.

The air was thick with “pea soup” fog and visibility was down to little more than 15 metres.

As a result, the train driver of the delayed service missed two vital stop signals.

The train, known as the “businessmen’s express” smashed into the back of the 5.18pm service to Hayes, slamming it into the pillars of an overhead railway bridge.

A mass of bricks and metal crashed onto the packed front carriages below, killing 90 people and injuring almost 200.

A third train, travelling on the bridge, miraculously stopped short of tumbling off the overhead rails.

It remains the third worst rail disaster in British history.

Mr Fagg, of Romany Rise, said he survived because he did not get in the front coach as usual.

He said: “The train seemed to be travelling fairly quickly. It was an almighty thump. People in the corridor went down like dominos.”

The retired quantity surveyor, who was 27 at the time, said that he and his friend had only decided to get into a carriage further back because there were more people than usual on the train because it was making an extra stop at Tonbridge.

He said: “I was a fortuitous survivor. Every time I go under that bridge I think of the accident. It was a terrible tragedy.”

Mr Fagg and his friend, who lived in Tunbridge Wells, managed to get a bus to his uncle’s home in Bromley where they spent the night.