World Mental Health day:Train driver involved in eight rail suicides haunted by body parts on tracks.

A former train driver was diagnosed with severe PTSD after he was involved in eight rail suicides – including a young man who waved and smiled before he was struck. Dave Goodwin says he is constantly haunted by images of body parts strewn across railway tracks following a string of traumatic incidents during his 23-year career. He says he has been left a ‘broken man’ by the deaths, and is now unable to sleep in the dark without having flashbacks, often turning to drink to help him cope.

Dave, from Plymouth, Devon, said the first suicide he witnessed was while working as a driver in Manchester in the late 1980s when a young man stepped out onto the tracks in front of him, waving. He said: ‘At 20-something years old, he took his life right in front of me and he used me to do it.

‘I saw this lad hanging out in the bushes, I slowed my train down as the signal was on red, and the signal changed and I started to move into the platform.  ‘All of a sudden he came out like a spring. I saw his fingers open up and I thought “what the bloody hell is he doing?” All of a sudden he just appeared out in front of me, waving and smiling. ‘He wouldn’t move, he just wouldn’t move.’ Dave pulled the safety lever and braced himself, putting his fingers in his ears and looking down as he tried to avoid witnessing the inevitable impact. When he returned to the station, a manager told him the young man was still alive and was going to be charged with trespassing, but the next morning two police officers arrived at his door to tell him the man had died

Dave decided to tell his story as part of World Mental Health Day in the hope that other train drivers will seek support. After the first suicide, he carried on driving trains for another nine years, and in that time was involved in another seven incidents.

In 1997, Dave stepped on human remains when getting out of his train cab, an incident he said ‘pushed him over the edge’. He was advised to leave his career for the sake of his mental health. He was later admitted to a psychiatric unit, where he was diagnosed with severe chronic PTSD and was given anti-depressants, which he still takes.  On an average night, Dave says he will only get around one or two hours sleep and said he started drinking to try and make himself pass out. He is now urging desperate people to seek help before it’s too late. ‘I did think that people who do that are selfish, but it’s not fair – it’s someone who is in desperate need, and they are desperate people.

‘The help is out there, it is there for you. Go and talk to a GP they’ll put you in touch with a councillor. ‘It’s not stupid to say if you’ve got bad thoughts and you’re thinking of ending your life, there’s someone there to talk to. ‘Life is precious, you’ve only got one life and you’ve got to live it.’

Metro.