Those bereaved by the Paddington train crash in 1999 are to mark the 15th anniversary of the disaster with a ceremony on Sunday.

They will lay flowers at the accident's memorial site high above the railway line at Ladbroke Grove in west London where, just before 8.10am on October 5, 1999, a total of 31 lives were lost when two trains collided almost head-on.

The subsequent inquiry into the disaster revealed that the Thames Trains service travelling from Paddington to Bedwyn had gone through a red signal before crashing into the London-bound high-speed First Great Western (FGW) train which had left Cheltenham Spa in Gloucestershire at 6.03am.

The Thames driver, Michael Hodder, 31, and the FGW driver, Brian Cooper, 52, were among those killed as the collision led to a fireball in which coach H was burnt out.

As well as the fatalities, more than 220 other people were injured, including Paddington Survivors' Group chairman Jonathan Duckworth, now 56, from Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Travelling on the FGW train, Mr Duckworth was among those who had to go to hospital, but it was later that his real suffering began.

Father-of-two Mr Duckworth said today: "Luckily I was only in hospital for around 24 hours but then I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I had to have about 18 months of treatment and was only able after that to take on small, part-time jobs. It was six or seven years before I was able to work full-time again."

The Paddington disaster was followed by fatal rail crashes at Hatfield in Hertfordshire in 2000, at Selby in North Yorkshire in 2001 and at Potters Bar in Hertfordshire in 2002.

But in the 12 years since, there has only been one passenger death in a train accident in Britain - 84-year-old Margaret Masson was killed when a Virgin Trains Pendolino derailed on a faulty set of points at Grayrigg in Cumbria in February 2007.

Mr Duckworth said: "The improved safety record on the railways is testament to the work we and other groups have done to highlight the importance of safety.

"We wanted to ensure that the complacency that had crept in regarding safety would not be repeated."

The RMT union said it was concerned that cutbacks on the railways could threaten safety.

General secretary Mick Cash said: "The RMT will never allow those responsible to forget that it was the creation of the privatised Railtrack, and the drive to cut corners in the name of profit, that led to the disaster at Ladbroke Grove and the wholly preventable loss of life.

"Privatisation, fragmentation and a complete absence of corporate responsibility were at the heart of the Ladbroke Grove tragedy and now, in 2014, the Government, through their McNulty Rail Review, are dragging us right back to that same toxic mix."

"The proliferation of private agencies and contractors, often employing casual staff on zero-hours contracts, and the opening of the way to privatise infrastructure in association with the greedy train companies, is rapidly dragging us back to the edge.

"In addition, the Cullen Inquiry into Ladbroke Grove highlighted the safety critical role of the guard and yet we have a Government that is using the current round of franchising to axe the guards from our trains."