The train driver did little to hide his taste for speed. He posted a photograph of a locomotive speedometer needle stuck at 200 kilometres, or about 125 miles per hour on Facebook last year, boasting that the reading “has not been tampered with” and openly relishing the idea of racing past the authorities.

Need for speed: Minutes after the crash, Francisco Jose Garzon was photographed being helped from his train's mangled remains by a medic, blood oozing onto his blue uniform from a wound on his head. Pic/AFP