A PENSIONER was killed after being hit by a train, an inquest heard.
Mystery surrounds why great-grandmother Edith Elsie Williams, 82, was on a railway line near Flint railway station in the early hours of August 8 last year while wearing her dressing gown.
Mrs Williams died after being struck by a train heading from Chester to Llandudno Junction.
An inquest at Mold, held exactly six months after her death, heard no one knows how Mrs Williams came to b e on the track.
Despite limited mobility she had made the lengthy walk from her home on Duke Walk, Flint, to the track near the railway station and did not have her walking stick with her.
A verdict of accidental death was recorded by North Wales east and central coroner John Gittins, who said he believed Mrs Williams had been in a confused state of mind.
One of her two daughters, Sandra Crofts, paid a moving tribute to Mrs Williams during the inquest.
“She loved people,” she told the inquest. “She idolised her family.”
Mrs Williams was a retired machine operator, who had worked on the railways at Shotton as a young woman.
On the morning of August 8, Ms Crofts attempted to ring Mrs Williams at about 7.15am but there was no answer.
She said she was not initially too concerned as she thought her mother may have been in the bath.
However, there was also no answer when she tried ringing about half-an-hour later.
After going to check, she noticed her mother’s blinds were shut and she was not in.
“I knew then something was desperately wrong,” she told the inquest.
She heard a body had been found on the railway line, but did not initially believe it could be her mother due to the distance from her home.
The inquest heard Mrs Williams had not walked without the aid of a stick for several years and suffered health problems.
“It seemed it impossible it could be mum,” she said.
“I thought it can’t be mum because she couldn’t have got there.”
In written evidence given to the inquest, train driver Lesley Baines said she was driving an empty stock train from Chester to Llandudno Junction in the early hours of August 8.
The train had just gone through Flint Railway Station shortly before 5am when she noticed a woman ahead of her in the middle of the track with her back turned.
Ms Baines hit the emergency break and sounded the horn but she said the woman on the track made no attempt to move and the fatal collision took place.
Emergency services attended but Mrs Williams was declared dead at the scene.
Mr Gittins said there was no explanation for how Mrs Williams came to be on the railway line.
“We do have something of a mystery as to how Mrs Williams managed to get to this location,” he said.
“I note from the evidence she was wearing her dressing gown.
“I think in reality she had become confused.”
He said he could not “see for one second” that Mrs Williams had intended to take her own life and expressed his belief she had simply been in the “wrong place at the wrong time” in her confused state of mind.
Mr Gittins said the death was caused by multiple injuries.