A railway conductor rescued a family's dream holiday when he found £2,000 cash abandoned on a train.

Barry Whitford was checking over a late-night service after it stopped at Portslade station when he found a rucksack left by a passenger.

Inside were the vital ingredients of a family holiday - and no phone number.

Mr Whitford, 41, of College Road, Kemp Town, Brighton, said: "We were coming down from London going to Worthing. We had just left Portslade and I was going through the train when I saw this rucksack sitting on a shelf.

"I opened it up and there was this big manila envelope with a passport, airline tickets and a plastic bag. I opened the bag and there was a large wad of British pounds and US dollars."

Conscientious Mr Whitford did not count the money, but he found out later it was the best part of £2,000.

Instead he searched through the bag for some kind of contact details and found a work ID and a driving licence with a home address.

He managed to track down the owner through directory inquiries.

"It was one o'clock in the morning," Mr Whitford remembered. "His wife answered and she was almost hysterical. She said he was trying to ring the rail station but he didn't know what to do."

The conductor arranged to meet the bag's owner, who lived in Portslade, at Brighton at 1.40am. He said: "He was absolutely over the moon. He said they were flying to Florida the following morning.

"They were planning to get up in the morning and tell their two children they weren't going any more.

"The poor bloke was shaking slightly."

When he handed over the bag, the man offered him a reward but Mr Whitford told him to give it to charity. He later received a card from the Red Cross thanking him for the £40 donation.

The discovery happened last autumn but now Mr Whitford has been given a gold staff excellence award by his employer Southern for his actions. He was one of 53 employees out of 3,500 to receive a prize.

Mr Whitford also won a silver award last year for carrying on working after a young woman passenger threw up all over him. He was on the last train from Brighton to London when the woman, who appeared to be drunk, vomited as she was passing him, then ran away.

Instead of cancelling the train, which was heading to Gatwick, the conductor cleaned himself up as best he could and continued his shift so that people on the train were able to catch their flights.

He said: "She just vomited on me from head to toe. She ran off into the night. The other conductor took over some of my duties so I could clean up. A lot of people would have cancelled the train but then you have got a load of people trying to get to Gatwick. I held my nose and got on with it."

Mr Whitford , who has worked for Southern for three years, received a bottle of Champagne for his efforts.

Su Patel, a Southern platform assistant at Crawley, was named Winner of Winners for his "good nature, smile, always going the extra mile and regularly staying beyond his shift to help passengers and staff".

Mr Patel was also given a bottle of Champagne and £1,000 to spend on shopping.

The awards were hosted by Southern managing director Chris Burchell with guest of honour Crawley MP Laura Moffatt.

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