Top railway chef was rail crash victim

Selby rail crash victim Paul Taylor won a chef-of-the-year competition just six months before his death.

Taylor, 42, from the Newcastle area, was named the Great North Eastern Railway chef of the year for 2000 at a competition at the National Railway Museum in York. He had worked for GNER as an on-train chef for the past three years.

Taylor and two colleagues are among 10 people known to have died after a Land Rover veered off the M62 and on to a railway track, where it was hit by the southbound Newcastle to London service.

Taylor is survived by his wife, Lee, a son and a daughter. He also had one grandchild.

A spokesman for GNER said Taylor had spent five years working in a staff restaurant at a Department of Social Security office in Longbenton, Newcastle, before joining the train company. He had also worked part-time as a catering lecturer at a college in the North-east.