BOSTON -- An MBTA driver managed to stop an orange line train moments before it nearly struck a woman who fell onto the tracks at North Station on Friday night.

The train was approaching the inbound platform at about 10:54 p.m. when the driver spotted the woman trying to stand up on the tracks and hit the brakes, according to MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. The train stopped just outside the platform, a short distance from the woman.

Passengers who witnessed the incident leapt onto the tracks and pulled the woman to safety, Pesaturo said.

Click For Surveillance Photos

Two MBTA transit police officers who spoke with the woman said she had been drinking several hours earlier and was noticeably intoxicated.

The woman reportedly fell and hit her head on the tracks just after a recorded message announced that the train was approaching the platform, according to Rick Sawyer, an editor at the local Web site Bostonist.

"It was like a movie," wrote Sawyer in a firsthand account of the incident. "The train stopped inches away from the woman's unstirring body, the frontmost part actually hanging over her. For a nauseating moment, we thought she had been killed -- by the train or by the third rail."

Pesaturo said that the woman avoided making contact with the electrified third rail. She was treated for scrapes on her knees at Massachusetts General Hospital.