Spanish train driver admitted he broke speed limit in phonecall after crash

A new recording has emerged of a phone call made by the driver of a crashed Spanish train just moments after the derailment.

In it, Francisco Jose Garzon tells a colleague he was travelling at more than twice the speed limit.

The train came off the rails near Santiago de Compostela in July, killing 79 people.

Investigators already know that the driver was on his phone at the time of the crash.

Black box data recorders showed that the train was almost twice the speed limit when it derailed.

Investigators said the train had been going up 119 mph shortly before the derailment and that the driver activated the brakes “seconds before the crash.”

A Spanish court investigating the accident said he was talking on the phone to an official of national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time.

The train was carrying 218 passengers when it hurtled off the tracks and slammed into a concrete wall, with some of the carriages catching fire.