Another Brisbane/Cairns rail crash

[Johnk]

This time the Sunlander, being hauled by two normal locomotives (usually one) collided with a garbage truck at a level crossing without signals or booms. The first locomotive was thrown 180 degrees and tossed on its side exactly like the Tilt Train accident a month ago. In that incident, both train drivers were killed and the truck driver survived. Today the tables were turned. The train crew survived and the truck driver died. The Sunlander is a much slower train with top speeds of 75-80 kph in our area, but the stronger locomotives no doubt helped save the train crew.

Here's a news report of today's crash. There's a video under the photo.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/01/2457801.htm

 

[illinoiscentral]

Thats sad. People need to be more careful!

 

[Johnk]

The railway line involved is almost 1900 km long with a thousand crossings with only Stop signs. The Tilt Train travels through some of these at 160 kph, yet installing signals at each crossing seems to be beyond the financial ability of our government. We also have a 1000 km of privately owned 2 foot gauge sugar cane tramways where the trains travel at less than 20 kph, but by law every road crossing must have signals! If the sugar industry can do it, why can't our government?

 

[hyper_kameo]

As i said to the newspaper comments... the driver of the truck is to blame.. if you cant see a train coming when you have "STOPPED" to "LOOK FOR TRAINS" along a straight section of track.. well you die .

 

[Johnk]

In this instance, the driver was a local garbage truck driver probably on his way home at the end of his shift. The town he lived in was very small, I think a hundred people or so, but he probably worked in the larger town of Innisfail a bit further down the track. It was almost mid morning New Year's Day, so he could have been tired from staying up all night, or maybe he just thought - "There won't be any trains on New Year's Day". Or maybe he just lost concentration for a second. As an ex taxi driver who worked 12 hour night shifts, I know how easy that is to do. As you say, he was in the wrong, but he probably didn't plan for the day to end that way.

It's hard to know what to do with the thousands of unguarded level crossings all over the country, but in Victoria they closed many of them down on certain routes and put one major signalled crossing every 5-10 km or so. Now the trains can travel at 140-160 kph with reasonable safety. Where I live most of the level crossings were just Stop signs, but most have been replaced with signals and even boom gates in the past couple of years. Despite that we still have level crossing accidents from time to time.

 

[Lo_Poly]

Oh dear... very sad. Both of these accidents.