Police believe a woman may have been trapped in a car with its dead driver for up to eight hours after it crashed through a bridge and plunged on to a railway line.

The driver of an approaching steam train saw the wreck on the line and managed to stop several hundred feet away from it.

The accident happened at Athlington bridge when the male driver left the A351 road a mile south of Corfe Castle in Dorset.

It is believed the blue Peugeot 309 car left the bridge and fell 30 feet on to the track - which is a preserved line, rather than a main line - between 0200 BST and 0300 BST on Saturday.

Back to station

The first passenger train from Swanage to Corfe Castle on the line began its journey at 0950 BST on Saturday.

Train driver, Peter Duncalfe, managed to stop the locomotive 100 yards from the wreckage after spotting the car on the line just after 1000 BST.

He later returned the train to the station.

The female passenger in the car was eventually airlifted to Dorset County Hospital.

She had serious injures.

The passenger was seriously hurt

The car was registered to a man from Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, the driver was found to be dead at the scene.

After the accident the operators of Swanage Railway repeated their calls for crash barriers to be put on the road after a motorcyclist left the carriageway at the same spot three years ago.

The chairman of the railway, Bill Trite, said: "It is somewhat shutting the stable door after the proverbial horse has bolted.

"If we had not been running trains I do not know how long it would have been before that unfortunate couple were found.

"The car had got itself under the bridge in such a position that dozens and dozens of motorists had passed by during the morning and did not see it."