A DISTRAUGHT train driver believed he had hit and killed someone...until he saw the same man walking up the platform at the next station.

The train was going through Hythe Station in Colchester on a journey between Clacton and London Liverpool Street when the driver saw someone on the line and applied the emergency brake.

Due to how close the man was, the driver was unable to slow down sufficiently and believed he had hit him.

He contacted the signalman and was told to carry on to Colchester North Station where another driver would takeover.

However, when he got there and stopped, he saw the same man - Mark Morrison - walking down the platform towards him.

The driver approached Morrison and confronted him about what had happened.

Morrison then apologised and said he had a meeting at work and was in a rush.

Morrison, 48, of Stanley Wooster Way, Colchester, was later arrested for trespassing on the railway.

He failed to appear at Colchester Magistrates’ Court and the case was proved in his absence.

It emerged the train had actually just clipped Morrison’s rucksack as he crossed the line but the driver genuinely thought he had accidentally killed the man.

In a statement read out in court, he said: “Due to the speed of the train I was unable to stop before I reached him on the tracks.

“I saw him trying to cross and could see him trying to climb up the platform.

“During my career I have been driving trains where people have been hit and killed and often there is nothing you can do.

“I honestly thought I had killed him when I saw him on the tracks dangling his legs.”

Magistrates fined Morrison £660. He must also pay £105 costs and a £66 victim surcharge.