It was an inter-urban train travelling from Sydney to Wollongong and it's industrial town of Port Kembla. I haven't caught the train to work for nearly a year now since we moved office and in any case it would have been going in the wrong direction. :-) (Meerkat trains to work, but also in the other direction. Gibbo, the third Aussie here, lives in Queanbeyan, not Sydney.)

There were about 80 people on the train, with 41 injured and 9 killed, including the driver. The crash location was about 1 to 2 kms south of a village called Waterfall which is the termination point for most suburban services on that line. The line at that point travels through some extremely rugged landscape with several cuttings, embankments, tunnels, difficult grades and steep corners. There was a belief amongst many of the survivors that the train was travelling too fast, but there has been no official speculation of what might have caused it. The train left the tracks on a left-hand curve, careening across the other line* and riding up the opposite embankment, demolishing overhead power staunchions. The first and second carriages are mangled as a result, the third and fourth are less damaged but are on their side.

This is summarised from an ABC radio report and an ABC news report. Also, a [link|http://www.abc.net.au/news/2003/01/item20030131084832_1.htm|News report from the ABC web site]**. The URL shouldn't change.

I'm sure many commuters are breathing a small sigh of relief it wasn't the other side of Waterfall: otherwise the extremely busy Illawarra line would be disrupted for a day or two, rather than less busy South Coast line.

Also, since the news report assumes familarity with Sydney: Helensburgh is the very next station after Waterfall (but still some 5 or 6 kms on) and Thirroul is the next major station south after that. Sutherland is the next major station in the other direction from Waterfall.

Wade.

* Trains almost always travel on the left-hand track in Australia.

** It probably looks funny that I appear to be relying on one news company for all this, but the [link|http://www.abc.net.au/|ABC] has a high reputation for quality journalism in Australia so I tend to turn to them first.

I'm pretty sure the line has not been totally accident free, but there hasn't been anything like that for a long, long time. Even the most recent in Sydney was a year or so ago out past the northern fringe (Hexham: goods train and inter-urban train collided; the cause is still unknown) and then 3 or 4 years ago on another line (Glenbrook: a Lithgow inter-urban ran up the back of the Indian Pacific; there were signal failures) and the one prior to that was, IIRC some 20 years prior (Granville; a suburban train jumped the tracks and hit a road bridge's central pillar). We've had train breakdowns a plenty, fortunately they usually stay on their rails!

Yesterday (i.e. the day before the accident) was very very hot: a lot of Sydney hit the low 40s. It is possible there was some line or equipment buckling. But I as I opened with, I very much doubt the South Coast line has been free from accidents all it's life. It was a very difficult line to build, with hideous grades and curves.

Wade.