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Adamstown railway station - coal wagon derailment
Photo Ref: 21147
Six coal hopper wagons bearing the markings of BHP JD (John Darling) and two CHG brake vans were involved in a runaway accident at Adamstown on 28 February 1955. The coupling broke as the empty train was approaching Fernleigh Tunnel. No longer restrained, the brake vans and wagons ran down the hill towards Adamstown. Quick warning blasts were sounded from both the locomotive and the guards van. The guard, Nicholas Nicholas was slightly injured when he jumped from his guards van just before the impact. The aftermath was recorded by Sydney rail enthusiast, Ed Downs. Between the footbridge and the wrecked wagons the verandah of the then Commercial Hotel (now the Gates) can be seen. The site of the wreckage is now part of the Adamstown Station car park. The location at or near this point had something of a history of runaways.One took place during 1944 with an earlier one involving a loaded coal train occurring on 23 January 1911 . On 27 September 1890, when the branch line was under construction, three wagons, two of which were loaded with stone, broke away and crashed into the contractor’s locomotive at the branch line’s junction with the “Sydney to Homebush Railway”. Photo. Ed Downs from “Adamstown via Fernleigh.” The compiler, Ed Tonks, acknowledges “Coal, Railways and Mines” by Brian Robert Andrews as a source of some of this information.
This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
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