One of Didcot's oldest residents has provided a new perspective on a recent Heralding the Past story.
Robert Badley, 94, known to most in the town as Charlie, contacted the Herald after reading David Taylor's article (Jan 17) about the Milton train crash of 1955 in which 11 people died.
The reason he got in touch, he said, was because he sat on the jury at Didcot Magistrates' Court for the inquest of one of those killed.
One of the reasons Mr Bradley wanted to provide some of his recollections was that Mr Taylor in his piece said that a Ministry of Transport report found the driver of the train to be at fault.
However Mr Bradley, who ran a jeweller's in Didcot, said that his jury had found the driver 'not guilty' of any fault.
He said: "I think the [fault] conclusion was unfair to the driver.
"We found him definitely not guilty because he had never been down the line before and he was supposed to have driven from Paddington to Bristol but he had only driven to Didcot before.
"British Rail in their report put the blame on the driver, but we as a jury certainly didn't.
"Any grandson or granddaughter reading that report would immediately think their relative was to blame for that accident but we found him completely not guilty."
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