Jaiden Ruttley was travelling by train from Windsor for a job appointment on Monday morning.
"Mum offered me a lift and I said I would just catch the train," he said.
Jaiden was talking to a couple of other young blokes as the train headed into Richmond station when all of a sudden it crashed into the buffer.
"We came to this sudden stop, it felt like the whole train had lifted up in the air," he told Fairfax Media.
"I was sitting down and was lucky enough to grab a pole before I hit my head on the wall.
"All you could hear was screaming and people in pain."
Bailey Hope, who had been talking to Jaiden, said it felt as if the train sped up after leaving East Richmond station before it smashed into the buffer.
"The driver had cuts all over his face," he said.
Sixteen patients in total, including the train driver and another crew member, were treated after the Warratah train hit the buffer on platform 2 at Richmond station just before 10am.
NSW Ambulance incident commander Superintendent Paul Turner said the most seriously injured patient was a 21-year-old man who was taken to Westmead Hospital with a broken leg.
"These people are very lucky. It was chaos, things could've been much, much worse," he said.
Two women, aged 31 and 77, were also taken to Westmead with broken collarbones. The 77-year-old also had a suspected spinal injury.
Four patients all up were taken to Westmead, five were taken to Blacktown Hospital, four to Nepean Hospital and two to Hawkesbury.
Superintendent Turner said a triage area was set up in a nearby park where all the patients were assessed by emergency services.
"The patients have been understandably shaken," he said.
Linda (surname withheld), a Windsor mother-of-one, was on her way to her first day at a new job when the crash occurred.
She was sitting down, six carriages back, when the train collided with the buffer and she was thrown from her seat, hitting her head in the fall.
"There were already a number of people standing up as we were approaching the platform ... people went flying," she said.
"When I got off the train I saw people with blood on them everywhere, I saw a man lying in a carriage and he couldn't get up, his partner had a huge gash on her arm.
"After a few minutes the shock of the situation hit me, I was shaking and crying - it was terrible."
With the Hawkesbury Gazette
