A MAN who risked his own life to race across train tracks to save that of an injured fellow passenger said danger was the last thing on his mind.

Unemployed Luke Brewster, 32, is being hailed a hero by another passenger who saw him go to the rescue on Sunday night, jumping down onto the tracks at Shipley Railway Station and dashing across them to help the badly hurt man.

“I’d shouted ‘don’t go on the tracks, mate’. I thought he’d be electrified or get hit by another train but he just went for it. He was quite a guy. I wouldn’t have done it,” said David Hanson, 38, who had just got off the 11.21pm Leeds train on Platform 2 where the drama happened.

Mr Hanson called for an ambulance while Mr Brewster remembered life-saving skills learned as a boy to check and clear the casualty’s airways before starting chest compressions.

“It just came back to me in a flash, everything I’d learned from a class my dad took me to when I was little,” said Mr Brewster, of The Sidings, Windhill. “I didn’t stop to think about myself. No-one seemed to be doing anything about it. I just heard screams and turned back round to see people standing around in shock, looking on the tracks and saying he was a gonner.”

Man seriously hurt after falling on train tracks at Shipley Railway Station

“I just said I’m going down there. People shouted at me not to do it but it struck me I was the only one who was going to help. If he had one chance it was going to be down to me. I just did what I did,” he said.

Mr Brewster said he had seen the man on his train but had rushed off because he wanted to get home after a day’s deep-fishing in Scarborough.

“We’d nodded at each other on the train from Leeds. I thought he might have been coming back from watching the big football match somewhere,” said Mr Brewster.

“I didn’t see what happened next but people told me he’d got off the train and been all over the place. He’d leaned against it as the doors shut. It moved off and took him under. It went about 50 yards before it stopped.”

Mr Brewster said he found out the man’s name from his wallet so he could talk to him while using bandages from a first aid kit from the Skipton-bound train to try and stop the man’s bleeding.

He said: “He was in a real bad way. I lost him a few times. A man on the phone to the ambulance was counting chest compressions for me. It was only after police and paramedics arrived that I went into shock. I couldn’t stop shaking, I still can’t. I just hope he’s going to be all right. I managed to speak to nurses on the ICU ward and they said he was stable. If it was me, my brother or dad it happened to, I’d hope someone would do the same as I did.”

A spokesman for British Transport Police said: “Our officers were called to Shipley railway station at 11.41pm on Sunday, July 10, to reports that a man had fallen on the tracks. The man, who is aged 39 and from the Ilkley area, was taken to hospital by ambulance where he remains in a serious but stable condition. Officers are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding how the man came to fall onto the tracks. The incident is not being treated as suspicious.”

Northern Rail said an investigation was under way so it would not be appropriate to comment. Network Rail said it was working alongside the British Transport Police and the Rail Accident Investigation Branch.