Gary Hart, the driver convicted of causing the deaths of 10 people in the Selby rail crash, was today jailed for five years.
Hart, 37, of Strubby, Lincolnshire, showed little emotion as Mr Justice Mackay sentenced him at Leeds Crown Court.
The father-of-four was convicted last month of causing death by dangerous driving after a jury decided that he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover before it plunged off the M62 and on to the East Coast mainline last February near the North
Yorkshire village of Great Heck.
Hart had told the court how the vehicle, which was towing a trailer loaded with a Renault estate car, crashed through branches and fences before coming to rest with its front end on the tracks.
He described how he scrambled frantically out of the driver's seat and was on the bank talking to a police operator when a GNER express, travelling from Newcastle to London, smashed into the Land Rover.
The train, which was travelling at 117mph, sliced the front off the vehicle as Hart stood just feet away but carried on down the tracks for several hundred yards with only its front set of wheels derailed.
But as the express passed over a set of points it was pushed further out of line just as a coal train heading for Ferrybridge power station approached loaded with 1,600 tonnes of coal.
The two trains collided to produce a scene of complete devastation with the shattered carriages of the passenger service strewn around surrounding fields and gardens.
Ten men - six passengers, a buffet chef, a senior conductor on the express and both train drivers - died. More than 70 people were taken to hospital.
The investigation into the crash showed there was nothing wrong with either the train or the track. Hart's decimated Land Rover was also painstakingly examined but experts found no faults.
The court was told how detectives focused on Hart's driving and particularly whether he could have fallen asleep at the wheel.
The jury heard how Hart, who was separated from his wife Elaine at the time of the crash, had not slept since he had a brief nap the afternoon of the day before the crash.
He admitted that he had spent most of the night before he set out on his journey on the phone to a woman called Kristeen Panter.
Mrs Panter, from Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, first contacted Hart eight days earlier through an Internet dating agency.
Phone records produced in the case showed he had spent more than five hours on the phone to Mrs Panter that night.
Later, Hart admitted to the jury he was intending to meet her in person for the first time on the night the crash happened.
He told the court he was "buzzing with
excitement" about this meeting as he made his way from his home in Lincolnshire to Wigan, Greater Manchester, where he was working.
Hart said he did not know why his Land Rover left the M62 as he approached the bridge over the East Coast main railway line in deteriorating weather conditions.
He told police he heard a bang from the back of his vehicles and then fought to control it as it veered off the road.
He refused to admit he had fallen asleep at the wheel.
He told the jury he was used to having little or no sleep as he had an unusual life which he led at "1,000 miles per hour".
But police accident experts told the court the tyre tracks left by the Land Rover and its trailer showed no signs of erratic movement or a sudden swerving.
Instead they said they showed a gradual drift which is characteristic of accidents caused by falling asleep at the wheel.
Sleep expert Professor Jim Horne told the jury that in his opinion Hart had "insufficient" sleep before embarking on his journey.
Hart, who is a keen amateur field archer, runs his own groundworking business from his home.
He has four daughters - Adrienne, 11, from a previous marriage, Megan, five, and Charlotte, six, whom he had with Elaine, and one step-daughter, 13-year-old Laura.
Hart was found guilty on December 13 last year of 10 counts of causing death by dangerous driving, by majority verdicts, after a 12 day trial at Leeds Crown Court.
Speaking outside the court Andy Hill, who was the train driver who survived the crash said he was not happy with the sentence.
Mr Hill, 40, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, said: "I'm not very happy. I thought it would be longer.
"I realise it might have been reduced on appeal, but I thought it would be a longer original sentence."
Mr Hill was one of two drivers in the coal train cab when the crash happened. The second driver, Stephen Dunn, died.
Mr Justice Mackay said the Selby rail crash was "perhaps the worst driving related incident in the UK in recent years".
He continued: "In my judgment, you (Hart) were not the victim of the Selby rail crash ... you were the cause of it."
The judge told Hart that he had to assess the level of culpability of blame involved in his driving, as well as the extent to which the consequences of his actions should be taken into account.
But most importantly, the judge said he believed Hart was "fighting sleep back" during his journey on the M62.
"You either actually knew or could be expected to have known from feelings of sleepiness that you were experiencing that you were at risk of falling asleep and, notwithstanding that, you carried on."
He said Hart had maintained his "arrogant claim" that he was not like other people and could drive safely with little sleep, but his claim had been "rudely disproved" by the jury's verdict.
Hart stood in the dock with his hands clasped in front of him and looked straight at the judge.
He wore a black leather jacket, dark T-shirt, dark trousers and white trainers.
Earlier the judge said Hart would be haunted by what happened for the rest of his life.
"I'm satisfied that you will live with the
consequences of what you did that day for the rest of your life but so too will, to a much greater extent, all the relatives of the 10 men who died and the survivors."
The judge added: "Any accident you chose to put yourself into was almost inevitable; which form it took, how it turned out, was largely a matter of how the dice fell."
After the case had finished the two detectives who led the investigation gave their reaction on the steps of the court with around 40 relatives of victims and survivors standing quietly behind them.
A North Yorkshire police spokesman told reporters massed outside that none of the survivors wished to make statements and asked the press to respect their privacy and not approach them.
Detective Superintendent Peter McKay, of North
Yorkshire Police, said he did not wish to comment on the length of the prison sentence but added: "There are some people standing behind me today who do not think it is long enough."
Mr McKay then repeated his comments which he made after the end of the trial that Hart was a "mobile catastrophe waiting to happen".
He added: "He could have avoided that and he will have to live with that for the rest of his life."
Mr McKay continued: "It was never the objective of the investigating team to convict Gary Hart.
"Our objective was to find the truth.
"I think we have done that."
He added: "Gary Hart today received five years imprisonment. His victims received life."
Asked whether he thought five years was long enough, Mr McKay replied: "No matter what the sentence was today, it will not bring lives back.
"It's impossible to measure misery or to transpose that into a sentence.
"He (the judge) was left with an impossible task."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-94274/Selby-crash-driver-jailed-years.html
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