Scores injured as train derails

By GREG ANSLEY

Investigators will this morning continue trying to find what made Queensland's high-speed Tilt Train derail, injuring scores of passengers as carriages ploughed through trees and gouged the surrounding countryside.

Seven of the nine carriages on the train, which runs at up to 160km/h, left the tracks shortly after midnight yesterday (3am NZT), about 50km north of Bundaberg, on what rail and union officials said was one of the safest stretches of the 1680km run from Brisbane to Cairns.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie yesterday called in Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators to lead the probe into the crash, including an analysis of the black box containing an electronic record of the train's journey.

"These Tilt Trains are very fast," he told Channel Nine. "They're the fastest Tilt Trains in the world on a narrow gauge, so that's why they have a black box attached to them.

"The Tilt Train system ... is one of the best in the world, so there would have had to have been a good reason [for the derailment]," he said.

In what Queensland chief medical officer Dr John Scott described as a lucky escape, none of the sleeping passengers were killed.

Only five of the 159 injured were seriously hurt, but hospitals at surrounding Bundaberg, Hervey Bay and Gladstone were stretched trying to deal with the influx of patients.

Doctors reported cases of spinal, rib and abdominal injuries, broken bones and burns, but most people received only minor cuts and bruises. Late yesterday 24 people were still being treated in hospital.

Passenger Frank Houdini told ABC radio: "I believe that what happened is that the train has been in mid-air, and when it hit - it was chaos after that.

"The next thing I know, I've gone through the front door and there's no more train."

Farmer George Pauza heard the crash, saw the scattered carriages, dialled emergency services and raced in his four-wheel-drive to help, using generator-powered lights to light the scene and guide rescue helicopters.

"[The passengers] were getting tangled up in barbed wire because there was a barbed wire fence between the train and the road," he told the ABC.

Helped by a neighbour with a chainsaw, Pauza cut through the wire and a tree that had been felled by one of the carriages to help passengers on to the road. Some had been trapped by power lines that had fallen across the wreckage.

Emergency service workers said the carriages had ploughed through the earth like a bulldozer, destroying everything in their path and strewing wreckage across the site.

As investigators yesterday began mapping the wreckage and examining the carriages and the tracks, Queensland Rail declined to speculate on the possible cause of the derailment.

But chief executive Bob Scheuber told reporters the track had been inspected earlier in the day, and a freight train had passed through the same section of line only an hour before the crash.

The driver of the freight train said he had noticed nothing unusual.

The track is regularly inspected because of the high speeds the Tilt Train reaches. The extension of the line from Rockhampton to Cairns was last year named Australian project of the year.

Built in the Queensland city of Maryborough to a Japanese design and launched in 1998, the Tilt Trains were designed to lean into corners so they could travel at high speeds along the state's existing narrow-gauge railway lines.