Blinded in one eye from a fragment of a 7/7 bomber's shinbone, blown out of the carriage by the blast and left for dead on the rails, a survivor of the 7 July attacks told his "astonishing story" yesterday.

Philip Duckworth, 41, an investment banker who was standing just a few feet from Shehzad Tanweer as he exploded his bomb, described how he lay on the tracks and "forced himself" back to life after hearing someone say he had "gone".

The inquests into the 52 victims of the terrorist attacks heard Duckworth recall the bomb as a "very bright flash" and "feeling I was inside it". "It seemed to go on forever," he told the court. "After I woke up, in the very loosest sense of the word, on the rails, I had a feeling that I had fallen out of the train. It was just me and the train had gone and I was sort of half on the rails." He had the "bizarre idea I had fallen out of a window" he said.

Duckworth said he could not breathe and must then have blacked out. When he came to, he felt "very uncomfortable" on top of the rails and wanted to get to Aldgate station, which he realised was a "ludicrous idea".

Hugo Keith, QC for the inquests, asked him about an interview he gave in which he said he felt "outraged" when someone described him as dead.

"I remember it was before I actually tried to get up and I was sort of laid there, just sort of trying to will myself, you know, I couldn't move," replied Duckworth. "Then I just remember some guy went past. He looked down and said, 'No, this one's gone' and then they moved on.

"I was like: 'No, I'm not, hang on a second. I'm not gone.' That's when I forced myself on my knees and got up. I staggered to the wall and put my hands out to catch my breath. I felt like I'd been winded." Keith told him he had "forced yourself back to life". After Duckworth got to his feet, he was helped on to a ladder being used as a makeshift stretcher, and taken to safety.

The court heard that he was blinded in his left eye when a fragment of the bomber's shinbone went into it. He said he now had a prosthetic eye, which was "very realistic, I'm very pleased with that".

Keith asked him whetherhe may have been "very much closer" to the bomber than had been previously thought. Duckworth, who said he could not remember where he stood on the train, said that he would be "very interested to find that out".

Earlier, Duckworth looked shocked as he learned that on 7 July he had travelled on the same overground train as the four bombers, Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Germaine Lindsay. After describing the banker's train journey from St Albans that day, Keith told Lady Justice Hallett, the coroner: "It would seem it was the same train that was addressed in evidence last week." Hallett told Duckworth: "You've reduced us to silence. It's an astonishing story. The idea that you could be so close to the bomb, be blown out of the carriage and still be here to tell your story is just amazing."

Earlier, Colin Pettet, an Aldgate tube bomb survivor who helped Duckworth after the blast, told how injured passengers screaming in pain had begged him for help before the arrival of the emergency services.

He described how he struggled to find help for Thelma Stober, one of three people he found on the tracks as he made his way along the tunnel. "She was screaming to me that she was dying. She was in a lot of pain. Her back was killing her and she was getting cold." He asked the "hundreds of people" passing him if anyone had any medical training, but no one stopped. He then asked for a coat and placed it over Stober, who lost a leg but survived.

Pettet, his voice cracking, told the inquests how he had tried to find a pulse on one of two men he came across on the tracks. He was forced to pause for a moment before resuming giving evidence. He said: "I tried to get a pulse from him and couldn't find a pulse on his neck or on his hands or on his arms."

The inquests continue.