THE two trains and the Land Rover involved in the Selby rail disaster were like the Titanic and the iceberg as they started on their journeys, the jury in the trial of the man accused of causing ten deaths in the crash was told before it retired this afternoon.

Mr Justice McKay was summing up the evidence at the trial of Gary Neil Hart, 37, who is accused of causing the deaths of the ten people killed in the tragedy, by dangerous driving.

The judge warned the jury at Leeds Crown Court that they were sitting in a criminal court, not a "court of morals".

And he said that the details of the five-hour conversation between Hart and his new "cyber girlfriend", Kristeen Panter, were entirely irrelevant.

He went on: "What does matter, what does matter a very great deal the prosecution say, is the time they spent doing it."

The judge said that the most important question for the jury to decide was the effect the length of the phone calls would have had on Hart's state of mental fitness to drive.

He told the jury: "Don't speculate too much about how different things may have been."

He told them to use the legal definition of causation when deciding whether Hart was guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and to use it "with care".

Talking about Hart's police interview some hours after the crash, he said many people would not have been able to utter a word having missed death by seconds that day, but Hart "got quite a few words out about it".

He added: "I suspect none of us who heard it will forget that tape of the call the defendant made to Sarah Pratt from the railway, stood 20 feet or so away from the Land Rover.

"And he watched that horror as the train, at 107mph, ploughed through the front of the Land Rover."

The judge also described petrol tanker driver Kevin Darwood as an important witness. The lorry driver says he saw tyre marks going at a shallow angle towards the edge of the road, but the defence dispute his evidence. Mr Justice Mackay had earlier said: "Put aside emotion and sympathy for the people who have been present in court every day in exercise of their right to watch this case - the relatives of those who died and suffered."

"Put aside sympathy for the defendant. For him, some of you may have felt sorry as being involved in this most appalling of accidents." He told the jury they could return three possible sets of verdicts.

Hart's driving did not have to be the only or main cause of the accident for him to be guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.

But it had to be a "significant" cause of a GNER express derailing and colliding with a Freightliner coal trial. If the jury decided Hart had fallen asleep at the wheel, but had been too remote from the disaster, they should convict him of dangerous driving. If they decided he had not fallen asleep, then they should acquit him.

Earlier, Hart's barrister Edmund Lawson QC told the jury: "Your verdicts cannot rewrite history. They cannot bring back the dead, but they can condemn a man who is alleged to have been responsible."

He said the 12 men and women were involved in a criminal trial, not an inquiry. The prosecution had not proved that Hart was asleep at the wheel, and six drivers had told them his driving was normal shortly before his Land Rover left the M62 at Great Heck.

For the prosecution, James Goss QC said: "When you actually stand back in this case, the one direct and immediate human act that was different from the norm and was the catalyst upon which all those events depended was the defendant's vehicle driving off the motorway and coming to rest on the railway line. There is no doubt about it. Without that highly unusual and vital event, what followed would not and could not have happened."

Updated: 14:53 Tuesday, December 11, 2001