TURNHAM Green tube station's grim accident record grew even more depressing on Sunday, when a 57-year-old man became the third person within the space of a year to fall into the path of an oncoming train.

Traffic police say they are treating the incident, which happened at around 1.40pm and closed the station for an hour and a half, as a deliberate act and therefore as non-suspicious.

The man had fallen in front of an oncoming Piccadilly line train (which does not stop at the station), but miraculously survived the incident as the train managed to slow in time.

He was still conscious and breathing by the time the air ambulance landed on Acton Green ten minutes later, accompanied by three road ambulances and a rapid response vehicle.

A spokesman for the ambulance service said: "The person was conscious and breathing but had serious leg injuries. He was given oxygen and had a collar put on his neck. He was then immobilised on a spinal board and taken by London ambulance service to Charing Cross hospital."

On June 27, 2003, broadcast engineer Iqbal Malik was killed by a Piccadilly line train after climbing down to the train line. While police said they believed the case to be a suicide, Mr Malik's widow said she did not believe this could have been the case. Months earlier a similar incident had occurred, with an unnamed victim.

Transport for London said across the entire network there is on average one such accident a week, but that three in a year was an unusually high number.