Five Oxfordshire men who risked their lives to rescue victims of the Paddington rail crash, will receive bravery awards from the Prince of Wales tonight.

Crash survivors Christopher Goodall, of Manor Farm, Culham, Tony Jasper of East Hanney, near Wantage, Mark Fisher, of Didcot, Martin Comberbach of Abingdon and Bruce Creed of Delamare Way, Cumnor Hill, Oxford, saved the lives of passengers.

They will receive the awards at a ceremony in Kensington, London for carrying out acts of bravery.

The certificates are being presented on behalf of the British Transport Police and will also go to about 20 members of the emergency services who rescued and treated victims in the aftermath.

Mr Goodall, an Internet entrepreneur, was a passenger on the Great Western Express service from Cheltenham to Paddington when it was struck by a Thames Turbo train in Ladbroke Grove, west London, in October 1999.

Despite managing to escape from the train with minor injuries, he re-entered the burning carriage to help lead injured passengers to safety. The father-of-three then fought his way through the wreckage to free an injured passenger, minutes before the carriage in which he was trapped was ripped apart by a fireball.

But Mr Goodall insisted he was no hero. He said: "Amazing things happen when you go through a crisis like that. The adrenaline gets going and you do things you wouldn't do in the cold light of day. I probably wasn't being very sensible. It didn't occur to me that the carriage would be completely engulfed by flames three minutes later."

Mr Creed, 55, a semi-retired financial expert, came to the aid of a badly-burned passenger whose clothes were on fire. The quick-thinking father-of-three used his coat to smother the flames, stayed with him until paramedics arrived and accompanied him to hospital.

He said: "The people of the three services did a wonderful job and they are the ones who deserve these awards."

British Transport Police spokesman Simon Lubin said: "These people put themselves at risk to help others, despite the fact they had just been through a very traumatic experience themselves. Without their heroism more people could easily have died."