Malcolm Gelsthorpe said he devel-oped incurable cancer after being poisoned while working on vintage carriages for the luxury sleeper train at the Steamtown Railway Museum, in Carnforth, Lancs, in the early 1980s.
Mr Gelsthorpe, 68, was an electrical engineer restoring the 1920s carriages of the train the setting for Agatha Christie's famous murder mystery.
But after being given the tragic news that he is suffering from mesothelioma - affecting the lining of the lungshe launched a legal claim.
Mr Gelsthorpe, of Mansfield, Notts, worked at the museum between 1979 and 2023. He sued his employers and, after judgment was entered in his favour by Master Roger Eastman at the High Court in London, is in line for up to £495,000 compensation.
However, his final employer, St Hoggs Property Investments Ltd, which is responsible for the liabilities of Steamtown Railway Museum Ltd, does not accept he is due so much.
At a pre-trial hearing last month, Master Eastman was told by lawyers that Mr Gelsthorpe's asbestos expo-sure occurred while working on plywood fittings as he restored the carriages. His barrister Peter Cowan said: “The inside shell of most of these carriages had been sprayed with asbestos. Heaters were mounted on asbestos ...