30/01/2026
Still as vivid as if it happened yesterdayโฆ.
RFS members from Wollongong and Sutherland districts were responded to this incident and provided fire protection for the crash site and extra hands to assist other services in the rescue and recovery efforts.
The fire fighter in the foreground is from our brigade with a hose line from our tanker.
Having four wheel drive vehicles ourselves and Otford brigade were able to reach the front of the wreckage.
I had known the driver since 1980 and worked with him many times during my 22 years as a train driver and driven through this very spot on countless occasions and this very train (G7) only a few weeks prior.
It was a rough day for everyoneโฆ..
๐ฑ Friday, 31 January 2003, at 7:14am a train taking passengers from Sydney Central to Port Kembla was travelling around a sweeping curve when it left the track at high speed and overturned approximately 4.2km south of Waterfall Railway Station. The derailed train collided with a sandstone cutting, causing serious damage to the two lead carriages and tipping the two rear carriages on their sides.
Emergency crews arrived at the crash site to find that two steel stanchions carrying the overhead electricity supply were down, and that the train was tangled in the electricity cables. While some of the injured passengers were sitting dazed on the ground outside the train awaiting help, it was clear that others were trapped and that there would be fatalities. Initial responders provided what assistance they could until the electricity could be turned off and the full response of the combined emergency services swung into action.
As the full seriousness of the situation became known, it was apparent that more resources would be required. The Brigadeโs Incident Control Vehicle, two rescue crews, three pumpers and two tactical rescue pods carrying specialized heavy rescue cutting, lifting and extraction gear were all dispatched.
However, the location of the crash site made emergency operations difficult. The closest road to the accident site was the Princes Highway and the physical terrain of the National Park meant that everything that needed to be taken to or away from the site had to be carried a grueling 1.5km across uneven ground by foot. Brigade equipment included stokes litters, ladders, oxy-vivas, grinders, glass cutters, power saws, oxygen cylinders, hand tools, hydraulic and lifting gear. Once the gear was carried to the crash site firefighters then assisted ambulance officers to carry injured passengers to the Ambulance triage area.
Extraction was a long, tedious, slow and frustrating process. But the ingenuity and determination of the rescue teams helped to overcome these problems. Throughout firefighters worked alongside members of the Police Rescue Squad to cut away sections of the train so that ambulance officers could reach the trapped passengers. Firefighters helped passengers out of the carriages, carried patients to the waiting ambulances, assisted the walking wounded, gave vital reassurance to the injured and distressed, and provided basic first-aid while Ambulance crews attended to the more urgent injuries.
The last patient was released from the train at 10.45am, and after the train was searched one final time by Police, Ambulance and Fire Brigade crews the rescue operations formally ceased. Tragically seven people were killed in the crash, and a further 45 people were injured.
[Post & Photo thanks to Museum of Fire]
๐ธ ๐๐ ๐ฃ๐ ๐ก๐๐๐ค ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ค ๐๐๐๐ ๐จ ๐
David Rayner writesโฆ. "On the day of his funeral, most if not all of W'gong was off to attend it so Eveleigh had to cover their jobs. I got the job he was doing on the day of the crash. As for flagging the pedal and if it's ever tempting to do it, I once did two Bankstown circles (that's 3 hours) on a W set that's reverser was stuck in forward. They put it on the Bankstown so it could run all day in one direction because that end couldn't be cut out. Try holding a W set deadman down for 3 hours solid. When I went back on the diesels in 2009, one of the greatest pleasures was not being physically attached to the train. To be able to get up and walk around on the move does a better job of keeping you awake than holding a handle ever will (and I was on my own so no comments about 2 man crews). In the end, this rollover was caused by going around a tight curve too fast. The same happened to 4620 at Wentworth Falls, to a Tangara at Concord West, to a train between Blacktown and Doonside although it didn't roll over but several people were thrown around and injured and the SM at Penrith was sacked over his treatment of them, and more recently to the XPT in Victoria. It doesn't matter why those trains were going too fast, only that they were. This will happen again as long as tight curves and low speed points are around with no ATP. The technology to prevent this has been around for several decades. I had it for the last 9 years of my working life and it was very reassuring to know that I could not go too fast around a curve or through points, exceed the speed limit anywhere for that matter, or pass a signal at stop."
20 years on ๐ https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/two-decades-after-waterfall-crash-train-safety-system-yet-to-be-completed-20230127-p5cfwn.html?fbclid=IwAR398vCBL5Wu_TcgnpnIuWxYxF0s7B55CS8mnX4nODqnOQifw8D_iHhrshA
