August 10, 2025 • 55 mins
On the morning of 18 January 1977, Blue Mountains commuters boarded their usual train, expecting nothing more than another routine ride to work. Instead, the Granville train disaster became Australia’s deadliest rail accident.
When a commuter train derailed and slammed into a road bridge, the collapse that followed trapped dozens in a nightmare of twisted metal and rubble. Rescue crews fought against the clock, and the nation watched in horror as the death toll rose.
Join Holly & Matthew as they revisit the events of that day — what went wrong, the incredible acts of bravery, and the lasting changes it brought to Australian rail safety.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/weird-crap-in-australia--2968350/support.
When a commuter train derailed and slammed into a road bridge, the collapse that followed trapped dozens in a nightmare of twisted metal and rubble. Rescue crews fought against the clock, and the nation watched in horror as the death toll rose.
Join Holly & Matthew as they revisit the events of that day — what went wrong, the incredible acts of bravery, and the lasting changes it brought to Australian rail safety.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/weird-crap-in-australia--2968350/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A strange, spiraling white light was spotted in the early
morning sky over Sydney, with even skeptical witnesses wondering if
it was a UFO. They were last seen on the
beach with a tall man and that's the best description
police have ever had of it.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
More than seventeen years after Harold Holt disappeared into raging
surf at Chevy a Beach, his widow has finally revealed
his last romantic words docky, terrifying, mesmerizing. That's the way
a number of Australians have described the alleged encounter with
the YOWI.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's time for the Weird Crap In Australian podcast. Welcome
to the week Crap In Australia Podcast. I'm your host
Matthew Sol joining me for another episode. Of course, is
the researcher extraordinary? Holysol Hey, And this is episode three
(00:55):
hundred and seventy five. Now, I don't think, ladies and gentleman,
that we have done a disaster episode since.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Fred Bow Holly, No, No, No, Beaconsfield and then Westgate
I think is after that.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
As well, so true true, So we have had a
couple Well, it's definitely time to delve back into that, Paul,
but before we do an announced today's topic just very quickly.
I did mention this on the previous episode, but I
think it's worth repeating over this episode and the next episode.
So we're just changing formats a little bit here. Instead
of doing four episodes a month under our old format,
(01:35):
we're going to be doing three episodes a month under
the old format, which is still going to be written
in research by Holly of.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Course, classic weird crap in Australia.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Classic weird crap in Australia. But Holline needs a break.
She's currently working fifty hours a week and is doing
twenty hours on the podcast and it's just not sustainable.
So we need to relax some of that burden. So
what I'm going to be doing is taking over one
week a month. You're going to get a Matt commentary.
We're going to record a commentary track for an osplitation film.
(02:05):
We have quite a collection there. We could actually do
this for many, many years. We don't know how long
we're going to do it, just until things relax a
little bit, get a few more episodes in the can,
and you know, ready to release. So we're just going
to take that small tweak to the format that's going
to be starting after this two parter and without further ado,
(02:27):
let's announce this the Grenville train disaster. May just a
little bit of a listener warning here. This one's going
to be rough. Take it away, Holly.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It was six nine am on Tuesday, the eighteenth of
January nineteen seventy seven when a standard eight carriage suburban
train left Mount Victoria Station in the Blue Mountains found
for Sydney's Central Station. Doo, thank you good Okay? Can
I think the train designated as the six ZHO nine
(03:03):
Supplementary inter Urban Service.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Jesus, can't they just call it train? Go onto the suburbs? No. No.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Was hauled by a forty six class electric locomotive, a bulky,
weather worn unit designated number four six two zero. This
particular locomotive, powered by overhead lines that delivered fifteen hundred
volts of electricity, had been in operation since the early
nineteen fifties and had a known mechanical history, including a
(03:32):
prior derailment at Wenworth Falls in nineteen sixty five. That
earlier incident was attributed to an irregularity in the train's
brake pipe operation, causing a freight derailment. The issue was repaired,
the scratches and dents were smoothed out, and four to
six two zero was put back into service without fault.
On this particular morning in January, four six two zero
(03:56):
was hauling eight carriages, a longer trail than usual. Standard
weekday operation often only saw six carriages, which were usually
fall to standing room only. These carriages were of an
older timber construction, originally designed for country travel. Do you
remember the old You probably wouldn't. I think we saw
this when we went on Zigzag when I was a kid.
(04:19):
You know how in Harry Potter and who hold up?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Hold up? Hold up? Hold up? Before we go down
the Harry Potter trail. What's Zigzag?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Okay? Zigzag Railway is a historic railway line that goes
through the Blue Mountains. When I was a kid, it
was the thing to do. They closed down, I think
due to lack of funds because people were like, I've
been on it once, I don't need to be on
it again. They reopened it recently, and then I think
they've closed it down again.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I remember, I'm pretty sure I saw it. Actually, it's
a steam train, right, Yes it is. Yeah, so we
were visiting your family and.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We were No, it's not that one.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
It wasn't the one that we saw between Buxton.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And Picked and no, I don't know, that's just a
stand it.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It was just a regular steam train for whatever reason
that day.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, because the train museums.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But yeah, I am aware of the old Blue Mountains
tourist route.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, that's what it was. But in the Harry Potter
movies when they're on the train and you see the
individual compartments, yep, that's the way that these carriages were
originally constructed to have those individual compartments.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I've been on that train.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Many at once featured in those internal compartment walls, giving
passengers a degree of privacy, but these had been removed
in a retro fit years earlier in an attempt to
modernize the carriages with open planned seating because everything in
the world needs to be fucking open plan. Unfortunately, this
left the carriage roofs supporting only by their sides and
(05:48):
end walls, without poles or supports that one would find
in a modern train carriage. All the weight of the
roof was being held up by the walls.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I'm sure that will never be a problem. Absolutely nothing.
The train comprised day carriages hauled by an electric locomotive
number four six to zero, with a driver and an
engine man, his observer, and the only other crew member
a guard in the guard's compartment in the rear of
the train. The train reached Paramatter without underward incident and
(06:16):
departed there at eight ten am with at least four
hundred and sixty nine passengers. Quote from formal investigation of
an accident on or about the Upper Main West Way
rail Line at Grenville, the eighteenth of January nineteen seventy seven. Ah.
You gotta love those folks writing reports in the seventies,
don't you.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Seventies They still do it now.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, just simplify, simplify.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Granville train disaster a story.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Every time I do an assessment. You know what my
lecture is always say to us, simplify, Simplify, keep it concise,
keep it to the point.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yes, but this is government and they're paid by the letter,
so they have to keep adding them.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You hand it to a bureaucrat. This is the report
on water going down a waterway and how it affects
people who utilize the waterway and waterways are good. I
like waterways. When I was ten, I visited a waterway
(07:14):
report as opposed to report on local waterways.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The weather was typical of a Sydney summer morning, warm, clear,
the sort of day when the humidity begins to set
in early and.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
You don't get to see all the disgusting pollution hanging around.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
The train made its way through the scenic ridges and
cuttings of the Blue Mountains, descending slowly towards the city.
On board were commuters, children on school holidays, office workers,
and hospitality staff. Some chatted quietly, others slept, lulled by
the steady rhythm of the train's motion and the hum
of overhead power lines.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So what you're saying is just a very very standard day,
very typical day on that particular train.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Absolutely. Around eight twelve am, the train was approaching Granville
Station in Western Sydney. Just east of the station lies
a gentle left hand curve, a section of track that
had reportedly been checked and passed quality controls.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
The State president of the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Engineermen,
mister Joe Booth, sent an inspection of the track on
December seventeenth. Oh that's my birthday by a METISA machine
which records any unevenness or non alignment that showed the
rails were in perfect order. Quote from the camera time Saturday,
the twenty second of January nineteen seventy seven. Hey eight
(08:32):
track perfect in December.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Check But this track, like much of the New South
Wales network at the time, was aging worn by decades
of under investment, deferred maintenance and reliance on wartime austerity measures.
Rail fastenings, wooden sleepers, ballast conditions all had suffered since
World War II, and successive governments had delayed proper reinvestment
(08:56):
in infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, but holytich, you can't.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Tell which government was in power from the end of
World War.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
II, the Liberal Government. I don't like to just point
fingers at any particular government, though in these circumstances now,
it's not going to surprise anyone to know that a
physically conservative government like the Liberal Government is going to
be less than willing to provide money for these sort
of services. However, some responsibility does need to be owned
(09:26):
by the population. If you tell Australians, hey, we have
a growing population, our services again a bit strained. We
need to increase taxes. Let's take the GST from ten
percent to eleven percent. Do you really think the Australian
people are going to go? You know what, You're right,
there are a lot more people here and these systems
do need a bit extra funding. So yeah, we do
(09:48):
need to sacrifice a little bit more of our income
in order to help fully fund these services. Do you
think the Australian people are going to do that?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Hohlly, No, I'd say turn around and tax the corporations.
But you know that's just me.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I agree with that as well. But at the same time,
you do need to support services and infrastructure, right, But
then if you tell the Australian population that they need
to do that by contributing a little bit more tax income,
what are they going to do? Not that? Fuck these trains,
Fuck anyone who uses trains until the train derails.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Of course, As locomotive four six two zero entered that
curve near Granville, traveling at seventy eight kilometers per hour,
which was well within the designated eighty kilometer per hour limit,
the left front wheel of the engine came off the rail.
Later investigation revealed that the track's fastenings had loosened due
to poor maintenance, allowing the rails to spread the weight
(10:43):
of the engines and carriages. Coming around the corner pulled
the right rail slightly out of alignment, allowing the left
to slip from its base. The wheel hit the sleepers
and of course the train directed, but derailmen itself is
not always fatal. We covered a went out in Western
Australia regarding a member of the royal family. That worst
(11:03):
injury was spilt Scotch locomotive massive and momentum heavy continued
forward off the track, scraping along the ballast and barely
slowing down.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
The locomotive proceeded in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable condition when
it collided with one of two sets of trestles supporting
the upper deck of the Bold Streak Bridge. It careened
on from there, demolishing all eight steel stanchions of the trestle,
and finally came to a rest on its right side,
two hundred and twenty feet east of the bridge, having
(11:35):
torn up the adjoining track. In doing so, it probably
struck the foundation a lower portion of a steel electric
power line mask, steering this off at the base Carriage
one collided with the power mast, which was apparently suspended
from the overhead power lines. This mass plowed through the carriage,
demolishing the superstructure, and the carriage finally came to rest
(11:55):
partly on its side, with the detached roof on the
adjacent tracks and the walls demolished almost to floor level
of the seventy three passengers in this carriage. Eight lost
their lives and thirty four were injured. The driver and
firemen on the locomotive, although badly shaken, were not seriously injured.
Formal investigation of an accident on or about the Upper
(12:17):
Main Western Railway line at Granville on the eighteenth of
January nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Carriage III was relatively better off, remaining mostly on its feet.
It tilted a little to the left, leaning against the
retaining wall on the eastern side of the Bold Street Bridge.
There were a few minor injuries, but nothing serious in
this carriage. Carriages three and four were next to pass
beneath the Bold Street Bridge, an overpass that connected the
(12:43):
main Granville thoroughfare with a suburb of Paris Park. The bridge,
built in the nineteen fifties, had undergone a curious modification
shortly after construction. Originally built to code, or so it
was said, the bridge was later found to be about
a meter too low to accommodate vehicle traffic safely. To
address this, additional concrete was poured atop the existing surface,
(13:07):
tripling the load on the bridge's vertical supports. These supports
rested directly in the railway cutting beneath, and managed to
remain upright under their increased load for decades. Carriage three
entered the shadow of the Bold Street Bridge just seconds
behind the locomotive. Then came Carriage four. Both came to
a stop directly underneath the structure, with the last three
(13:29):
to four meters of Carriage three underneath and the last
five to six meters of Carriage four remaining into the
open air behind them. Carriages five through eight remained unaffected
by the derailment itself. They were basically parked on the
western side of the bridge, still on their rails, though
the passengers had no way of knowing what had just
transpired up ahead. For all they knew, there was a
(13:52):
small jolt and then they rolled to a stop.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, they're the lucky ones in this particular case. Holly.
We have a quote the driver felt a bump or
a bang just west of the Bold Street bridge, and
this was the result of the train's crushing points. The
train had continued for some distance before hitting the leading
end of a check rail. It had traveled a further
forty eight meters before mounting the concrete sections of the
(14:16):
stensions of the overhead bridge. Quote from the Cambra Times, Tuesday,
twenty second of February nineteen seventy seven, page seven, Granville
train inquiry.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
As you can imagine, there was a massive bang which
caught the attention of multiple people in the surrounding area.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I heard something that sounded like an earthquake. I felt
the impact there she missus. Jean Memory had witnessed the scene.
Quote from the Camera Times, Wednesday, nineteenth of January nineteen
seventy seven, page three, last five were rescued.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Fifteen seconds after the train hit the bridge supports. The
Bold Street bridge, which was still framed, concrete laid and
burdened with two lanes of morning traffic, collapsed directly onto
carriages three and four, with devastating speed and unimaginable force.
Five hundred and sixty tons of bridge structure and vehicles
(15:10):
dropped into the rail cutting, crushing the timber carriages below
like matchboxes. That's more than a quarter of the weight
of the West Great Bridge section that fell in nineteen seventy,
landing on wooden roofs of train carriages, no longer designed
to hold up its own weight.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Unfortunately, the trestles supporting the bridge gave way, and with
approximately two hundred and fifty pounds of the northern span
and approximately three hundred and twenty tons of the central
span of the bridge falling onto positions of carriages three
and four. The roofs of carriages were crushed in, the
signs were burst outwards, the height of the carriages from
floor level reduced in some cases to inches. The result
(15:53):
was catastrophic. Quote from thermal investigation of an accident on
or about the ut Main Western Railway line at Grenville
on the eighteenth January nineteen seventy seven. Going to chew
through that very quickly going forward.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I think we can just call it formal investigation from
now on safety.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
This speeking sounds good.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
The concrete laden with reinforcement and still holding the cars
that were crossing at the time of collapse, including a van,
a sedan, and surprisingly a motorcycle landed without warning. Passengers
on the train who were adjusting their coats or glancing
at their watches only seconds earlier died in their seats.
Some were compressed so completely that their shoulder joints were
(16:36):
discovered below knee level. Forensic pathologists would later confirm that
many died instantly, but others lived on some for hours
in beneath the wreckage.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
All right, so using our little friend chat GPT here,
I'm going to talk to you about the immediate effects
on the human body. So first and foremost, we have
instantaneous ushing. The force from five hundred and seventy tons
approximate combined weight of the falling spans would completely crush
the structure of the train carriage, collapsing the roof into
(17:09):
the cabin space. Any passengers within it would be compressed
between the roof and the seat floor structure. As Holly
just mentioned, that was inches. In some case, people would
be suffering from massive blunt force TRAMA. Bodies would experience
extreme blunt force trauma, with likely immediate destruction of the skull, spine, chest, cavity,
(17:33):
and pelvis. This would be instantaneous death would occur in milliseconds,
if not faster. The thing Obviously, this would have happened
a lot quicker when it came to the billionaires underwater
sub that went to visit the Titanic Hollie. But we're
sort of dealing with a very similar sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I mean, the timeframe is almost the same, is it
really almost? I mean it doesn't take much longer than
that be a brain to like the implosion, Yes, it
happened inward and that just killed everybody. But this one,
with the massive crush, it's just it drops and five
hundred and sixty tons it drops fast.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Absolutely. Furthermore, compression injuries. The forces would cause total crush syndrome,
where limbs, organs, and titus are flattened beyond recognition. Bones
would be pulverized, internal organs would be ruptured or expelled.
Then you have amputation and displacement. The sides of the
carriages were burst outward, indicating lateral explosive forces. This can
(18:33):
lead to the severing of limbs to capitations or complete dismemberment,
depending on where individuals were located relative to the rupture. Now,
when it comes to survivability, chat dpt says there is
virtually none. Actually, one thing that it does sort of
remind me of actually is the Twin Towers when they collapsed,
(18:55):
all those people who got caught between slabs of concrete.
That's why identification was incredibly difficult in some cases, because
at some points you only had the very vaguus remains
of what used to be a person. So effectively, these
two carriages just turned into a broken mess of scattered
(19:17):
remains of train and people or combined together into one
horrific mess.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
There was a twelve page spread in I believe it
was the Women's Weekly, which Matthew is about to quote here,
that has all of the photos of after everyone was removed,
Like once they pulled the slabs off, they show you
what the train looked like underneath and stuff like that.
So if you're curious, you can go look for it.
(19:44):
That's it truth.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I'm actually having a look at some of the images
right now, Holly.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Like match sticks just flat.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
There's just no way you walk away from that, Like
there's yeah, you're right, Like yeah, it's like a I
sort of think of build a rest like you think
of a compressed tube, right, like you think of a
steel pipe for example. You know how you have to
crimp them sometimes. Yeah, right, you know, both ends of
(20:19):
these train carriages look like they've been crimped to nearly
nearly perfect level. You know, there's the normal train carriage,
and then it turns into a crimp and then it
just is flattened two flats. You could possibly make it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Like it's cut off in a ninety degree in angalism.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, it's almost like a platform. I suppose it's almost
turned into a platform into the middle of the train.
My god, that is absolutely horrific.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
If there's a photo there, I don't know if you
can see it. There is one there where you can
see where the seats were seatbacks have just been basically
pulled concerting and pushed back into the one behind it.
Those seats are what kept that four or five inches
of carriage from being crushed. So there was actually a
survivor who remained in that aisle for hours between those seats.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
That is horrific. I would hate. I can't even imagine
that what that would be like that intensity, you know
what it actually it reminds me of that film we watched,
you know about the Peruvian.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
The ones on the mountain.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, the ones on the mountain and Peruvian or Kilean
the soccer team I think on the Andes.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Remember the scene where as the crash started and people
were crumpled by the seats. Yeah, yeah, they got off
better than those people did.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, all right, And we have a quote as only said,
I hope we've painted a picture for you. There's it's
fucking horrific. We were crawling through the wrecked carriage. It
was dark like a dungeon. Everything was flattened. Suddenly a
white face peered at us and a young girl said,
I'm alive. I'm alive. We got her out after five hours.
(22:15):
Kept talking to her and she'd smile at us. She
was worried about her legs, but we kept saying how
are you, and she'd smile again. Quote from The Woman's
Weekly Wednesday, the second of February nineteen seventy seven, page
forty eight, a Australia's worst trained disaster.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Among the first responders was Father Michael Champion, a local
Roman Catholic priest. Reports differed slantly on his knee. Some
sources called him Let's Champion, but all agree on his actions.
He was the first to climb into the mangled wreckage.
He prayed with the engine, He ministered the last rites
to the dead and dying. He offered reassurance and what
(22:51):
little comfort he could to the dozens of people wedged
into the narrow confines of the crushed carriages.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
A Roman Catholic father Michael Campion reported that he saw
at least five passengers still alive in the wreckage of
one of the carriages, the dozens of others who appeared
to be dead. Father Campion said the people sitting on
the left hand side of the train had some chance
of survival, those on the right all dead. Many of
the bodies which twisted, and the interior of one carriage
(23:21):
was soaked in blood. Father Campion described the scene as unbelievable.
He added, there's just nothing anyone can do for the
victims at the moment. The right side of the trainers
crushed into tiny pieces. Some of the injured I was
able to see were grown for help. It's horrible they
had no chance. Quote from the Cambra Times, Wednesday, nineteenth
(23:43):
January nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So the reason why one side of the train was
a little bit less crushed than the other so underneath
each of the spans there was two trucks, so there
was one going into the station one coming. Because the
train knocked out the support on the right side of
the train, it meant that that side of the bridge dropped.
(24:10):
So the bit on the left that was connected to
i'll call it the mainland, remained standing mostly so there
was a little pocket in that little triangle then where
survivors could be found. But anyone who ended up on
the wrong side of that triangle didn't survive. Did that
make sense?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah? Yeah, you're basically saying that it collapsed on a
very specific angle, which sort of it's sort of sort
of hard to explain.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
One end remained connected to the land, the other end
fell into the hole.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
The trains driver, Edward Olowentz, and his assistant both survived
the initial derailment. Olan Wentz was fifty two years old
and had driven trains for eighteen years. He had an
unpl lemish record, and the inquiry would later clear him
of all faults. Though bruised and suffering from shock, he
managed to pull himself out from the cab. What he
(25:10):
saw behind him. No one can imagine the roof of
the first carriage had been completely torn off, the second
was tilted but largely intact. The carriage three it ended
suddenly shorter than it had been, and from his vantage
point he could not see carriage four at all around him.
(25:30):
The rescue operations began.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Mister jack Haw, who lives opposite the bridge, sad I
was hosing out the bird cages on the front verandah
when there was a terrific bang. Two local butchers ran
into the bridge, saw one car was just balancing, and
tied a rope to it so the people could get out.
As I watched or saw that, most of the passengers
were stunned, and it took them a while to realize
what had happened. They eventually climbed down out of the carriages.
(25:57):
Quote from The Camera Times, Wednesday, nineteenth of January nineteen
seventy seven, page three. God had his hand on me.
I really, I really really struggle with this during people
like Look, everyone accepts grief, Everyone accepts disasters like this
in their own way, shape or form. I think I've
explained this before for me. You know, the inherent chaos
(26:19):
of the universe is pretty fucking fair to me. Right
one day you could be walking down the street and
you get hit by on the back of the head
by a bucket that falls off a construction site, you know,
twenty feet above you. Right, Random shit happens can happen
any of us. That's fair. I can live in that world.
I don't understand how some people can turn around and say, oh,
(26:41):
well God was protecting me, But what about the people
in courages three and four them, Like, how do they
square that up?
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Well, obviously not a single person in those carriages was
a Christian or Howurst or whatever they specifically believe in.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And that's why I have a little bit like, look,
everyone going to cope in their own way. I get that,
I really really do. But at that point it almost
feels disrespectful, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Oh, it absolutely is. It's saying that my life is
more important because my imaginary friend values as such, put
all those people in.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
It, and yeah, so I can live with my I
suppose that's why. That's my philosophy, isn't it. You know,
And grief is so multifaceted and complicated, you were going
to look for ways to you know, rationalize, rationalize. Yeah, absolutely,
that's the perfect word for it. So I shouldn't get angry.
(27:39):
I should just accept that everyone has to rationalize disaster
and grief and chaos in their own way, and that
my way is just different and their way is different.
Stupid counseling course making me feel feelings. It's been a
fantastic course. Actually, I think previously to learning about mental
health and learning how how to help people with it
(28:01):
and even to help myself with it, I think I
would just sort of sit in that feeling without sort
of thinking that feeling through. And it's interesting that, you know,
I feel like my anger decreases the more I rationalize
through you know why I am feeling that way, why
I am responding to that way. There's a little little
(28:23):
it'll be a bit of free mental health advice for everybody.
Rationalize everything, well, you know, rationalize why you feel the
way you feel. So, for example, I felt pretty angry
that that person was like, well God spared me, but
fuck these other people. I was like, well, you know,
grief is multifaceted. This is the way this person has
(28:46):
been able to console themselves and rationalize what has happened
to them. You know, they're believing in God's plan. Their
way is different to my way, but both ways are
equally valid and therefore I'm less angry makes sense sure.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Rescue operations began immediately. Granville locals rushed to the scene.
Emergency services arrived in wait, New South Wales, police from
as far away as Liverpool, Strathfield and Blackdown, ambulance crews,
firefighters and railway workers. Chainsaws were initially used to cut
through the exposed wooden roofs of the carriages trying to
(29:26):
access survivors, but danger still loomed for both survivors and rescuers.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Petroleum gas leaking from crack cylinders on the Grenville train
had seriously hampered rescue operations at the crash scene. The
judicial inquiry was called today. The police officer in charge
of the rescue operations, Inspector D R. Williams, said the
gas was discovered about seventy five minutes after the crash.
That was our worst step back of all, he said.
(29:52):
We were preparing to use oxy cutters oxyacetylene equipment, but
Quinnitt it was a low pressure gas coming from bottles
on the train. Everything had to be cut by other means.
The gas bottles used for heating the carriages were about
the crushed and buried and leaking slowly and were almost
impossible to reach. Quote from the Camera Times, Tuesday, the
first of March nineteen seventy seven, page seven, Leaking gas
(30:15):
hampered train rescue.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
So not only do you have the unstable remains of
those carriages, the two that were compromised. Not only do
you have the debris of the bridge settling. Not only
do you have the cars that were on that bridge
having their own issues. You then have gas cylinders underneath
all of this, leaking gas and getting ready to blow.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, you're trying to conduct a rescue operation while two
bombs are slowly ticking down under your feet. It was
six bombs, but yes, well six bombs. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
The gas filled the air beneath the collapse bridge, displacing
oxygen and posing an explosion risk. Any spark, one from
a power a radio, or even a static discharge could
ignite the site. As such power tools were being from
the scene, rescuers were forced to rely on hand tools
such as crowbars, hammers, and hack saws. Working in stifling heat.
(31:15):
They're breathing shallow and deliberate to avoid breathing in gas
if they happen to smell it, there's actually a news
footage on YouTube of the breaking news of this happening,
and you can see footage of someone halfway up a
pole trying to cut a chain with a handsaw.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well, I mean, it's all you can really do, and
I mean, like, let's I'm going to be brutally honest here.
Most of the people were going to be gone anyway.
Ones who survived. Do you know much about crush syndrome.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I remember some of it from when we did the
Threadbow episode.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So one of the biggest problems with crushed syndrome is
that essential the cells are ruptured and stuff starts to
leak out into your body. It's all well and good
when our body is working properly and all of our
minerals and nutrients it contained, but during something like crush syndrome,
you can end up with things like passium places that
shouldn't be, causing organ failure. So for some people who
(32:18):
suffer crush injuries taken to hospital and then unfortunately will
die a week later because of the rupturing of their cells.
Looking at some of these photos here, and I'm not
saying that the right thing to do is to stop
rescue efforts. I'm not saying that in the slightest miracles
can happen. They happen every day. But what I am
(32:41):
saying is that I applaud them for trying their best
and working as fast as they could. But I don't
think they have to feel any responsibility that their lack
of equipment due to the gas leak would have saved
more lives.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Does that make sense, Yeah, I think they on the
balance of probability, but losing one hundred percent of people
to an explosion is a lot worse than losing ninety
nine percent to a crush.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
That's right, you know, because that is the rescuers, potentially survivors,
emergency support people, volunteers.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Potentially bystanders who are up the top watching all this.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And it's not right to sacrifice the living for the
already dead or will be dead. And that's a pet
That is a terrible thing to help to do and
I never want to be in that position myself. No,
I would not wish that on anyone else, But that
is the truth.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
New South Wales Fire Brigade units would deploy to ventilate
the site. They used fine water mists to suppress the
presence of gas vapors and to prevent ignition. But the
danger wasn't just from the gas. The bridge was still settling.
One slab shifted two inches after the first declaration that
the rescue efforts needed to be paused. That shift trapped
(34:04):
two rescuers and crushed a generator. It was one of
several moments that later led to new national standards for
safety during rescue operations, principles later applied at disasters like
Threadbow landslide and the Beacons Filled Mind collapse.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Then the slab came down. Slab shifted down two inches
even while our fellows, pinning two rescuers and crushing one
of our porter power outfits like butter. This is when
one of the doctors wanted one of our fellows to leave.
He wouldn't leave, and neither would the doctor. Because we
got a few surprises. People speaking to us that later died,
(34:39):
and an old fellow that said, don't worry about me,
I'm done for He said, you rescue the young people.
Imagine that he died. Quo from Grenville rail Disaster January eighteenth,
nineteen seventy seven at Western nine di I uploaded a
YouTube February the fifteen twenty and eleven.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
The rescue is stretched on. Victims were found alive beneath
the bridge's cross beams in small pockets of survivable space,
where structural members had held up just enough weight to
create twenty four inch gaps. That's two feet.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I'd be dead in this instance. I don't survive this
at all. I'm too tall.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
The fact that anyone fucking survived in any circumstance.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
That's what always like. The human body is so fucking frail,
and yet under the right circumstances, you can fling a
human across a football field and under the right circumstances
they can survive.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
You can shove a steel rod through someone's brain and
they can still survive.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
People have jumped out of planes and their parachute hasn't
popped and they have survived the fall. You know. It's
just it's fascinating to me that we can be both
at the same time so incredibly frail but also so
squishy and malleable that we can survive those extreme instances,
(36:13):
And it's just very difficult to comprehend.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
In order, I think to have survived this, you would
have had to have been hit on the heads so
fast and drops so fast and fallen in just the
right way to go between those two rows of seats
or underneath a crossbeam, because in any other circumstance, that
thing is just going to keep coming down on you.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I think that's a fair assumption to make, actually, because
if you think about it, you know, what are your
three steps here? Whack to the back of the head
pushes you forward very quickly, but you're down on the
ground very quickly, so you curl up after having a
head injury. Everything collapses around you in just the right
ways to give you that little pocket of space. I
(36:57):
think that's probably a fair assumption to make, that Holly.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Most of those found alive were in the aisle of carriage.
Four bags of ice were packed around them to prevent
blood loss and swelling in the extream summer heat. Surgeons
crawled through the wreckage to perform emergency amputations. One young
man had a foot removed on site in order to
free him. Another was rescued after a partial walpinning him
(37:22):
was delicately braced with timber and moved by hand. But
there were of course miracle stories coming out too from
survivors who almost weren't.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I would argue the guy who had his foot amputated
to save his life was probably very happy with the outcome.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I'd rather sacrifice this little bit than sacrifice all of.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
This sacrificed part of me to the metallic gods, Holly,
I can tell you I was very happy to lose
the top of my thumb and not my whole hand.
You know what I mean, yep. Several of those on
the train said they owed their lives to the fact
that they had moved from the crush carriages minutes before
preparing to leave the train. Mister Bill Linley twenty eight,
(38:02):
said he had just walked clear of the section hit
by the bridge when the accident happened without warning. The
roof came down and knocked me to the floor, he said.
When I booked back, the carriages were crushed flat. It
was like looking at the end of a wall. Mister Linney,
a technical officer, got out without a scratch. I don't
believe in lucky, said, I believe that God had his
(38:24):
hand on me. I was so close to being crushed.
John Stewart sixteen said I had just come out of
the toilet at the rear of the carriage when there
was a sound like thunder. Then I saw a wall
of bricks and concrete crash through the roof about a
meter in front of me. I ran out of the
back of the carriage and must have just staggered around
on the rails. I must have been stunned. All I
(38:46):
remember is a lot of people running from the station
and a few people screaming inside the train. John of
Blacktown caught the train for the first time today. He
was traveling to Sydney to collect a jacket he had
left in a restaurant. It must be the luckiest person
in the world today, he said. But you said he
had helped three six bodies from the carriage in which
he had been traveling. There were three old people and
(39:07):
three young girls, and they were all dead. He said,
I'm just going to go home, go to sleep, try
and forget about all of it. I'm very tired. Quote
from the Canberra Times, Wednesday, nineteenth January nineteen seventy seven.
God had his hand on me.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Now, I assume that counselor Matt would prescribe therapy to
everybody here.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
One hundred percent. And I am not a counselor yet.
Just you can get in trouble by saying.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
That technically you can't also diagnose, which is why I
didn't ask you to diagnose them a shock.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
No, no, of course, Like in respect to what you
would do with these people now, I think it is
fair to say that all of them are going to
be suffering from PTSD. The symptoms that go along with that.
PTSD is multifaceted and very complicated. So a lot of
people go, oh, yeah, they hear loud noises and they
(40:01):
get scared. That's absolutely one symptom. But one symptom is
also depression and anxiety and suicidal idiation, you know, So
there's a lot of different things that go on with PTSD.
But yeah, I would recommend that all of those people
would have I think you have to go beyond I
(40:22):
think you would have to do a tandem of counseling
in psychiatry to manage a lot of those symptoms, and
probably group therapy as well. I would imagine an idea
specially specialized grief therapy as well. So in those sort
(40:43):
of circumstances, wholly these people become very, very complicated because
you have to approach them from what's from a case
management perspective. If that makes sense. So one of the
things that we're being taught actually right now is a
thing called case management, where you would have to look
at the victim, what's already in their lives and what
(41:06):
they may need. Right So it's like if they already
go to church, well, with the patient's consent, you could
actually talk to their priest so that your counseling and
the priest's spiritual counseling can sort of work together in tandem.
(41:26):
And then through the church you might be able to
find group therapy as well. So you would sort of
have to manage all of their different problems, and they're
going to be a lot of problems.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
By mid morning, the rescue seen at Granville had taken
on the look of a wartime disaster zone. Smoke, dust,
the distant wine of sirens, and the scent of blood
and burnt metal filled the air. By ten am, a
crowd of approximately three thousand people had gathered behind police lines.
Many were locals, some looking for loved ones, are simple
(42:00):
unable to stay away from the unfolding horror. I hate
looky loose, Get out of the fucking one. Yeah, all
they do is cause problems. Now you'd have a bunch
of influencers doing like TikTok dancers in front of it.
I mean at this point in time, you also had
the news people in the seventies standing they're trying to
take a video or you've got the look you lose,
trying to get on the video.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Quick, quick, let's put on the show to let's put
on our like little pants and do a little TikTok
dance in front to some sort of jazzy sort of music.
Now people may be like, come on, Matt, like that's
a bit harsh. I was watching a video the other
day of a car accident and the people who are
in the car that had the accident, right, they've jumped
(42:43):
out in front of it and done the little dance
while the other people in the car that they've hit
are calling obviously either police or their insurance company, right,
and they're doing a little TikTok dance.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
I would use that as admitting fault.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
I would too, I'd film the whole thing and and
submit that as evidence. But yeah, I think today it
would probably be even worse than what it was back
in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
As the crowds pressed in for review, police were forced
to keep pushing them back to maintain room for rescue
efforts and vehicle access.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Fucking horrendous, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (43:16):
If you are ever in a position where you are
within sight range of a disaster like this, get out
of the fucking weight and don't try and crowding. At
ten am, the first of the three motor vehicles that
had been on the Ball Street bridge at the time
of its collapse was pulled from the wreckage. The removal
of these vehicles, along with the slabs of concrete and
(43:38):
twisted rebum, was critical to reducing the weight bearing down
on the carriages. Every kilogram lifted was a potential breath
of life for someone trapped below. As the hours dragged on,
the temperature climbed. It was the middle of January, a
stray in summer. In full swing, Audible cranes were escorted
(43:59):
into the disaster site under police sirens. Urgently needed to
remove bridge segments. The wreckage posed so many safety risks
that even the weight of rescuers was considered. In one case,
police officers were ordered to climb onto the booms of
the cranes as improvised ballast, hoping their weight would counterbalance
the lifts enough to avoid secondary collapses. By midday on
(44:23):
January eighteen, fifty passengers had been transported to local hospitals.
More than two hundred and fifty personnel were now engaged
in rescue and recovery, police, firefighters, sees, volunteers, ambulance crews,
railway workers, and medical professionals. Among them were Red Cross
staff handing out blankets and water, and doctors and nurses
(44:45):
treating the wounded in triage areas set up on the
tracks and in nearby ambulances. At one point, the airline
from a portable air compressor was fed through the cracks
in the concrete in the hope that any surviving passengers
trapped in pockets of space might at least be able
to breathe. In some cases, they could hear voices, faint
(45:08):
force and desperate. In others, there was only silence. For
many death had come instantly. Others lingered, conscious, lucid and
aware of the crushing weight on their bodies. They talk
with rescuers, They described where they were. They even cracked
jokes to keep morale up. One young girl kept her
(45:31):
fellow survivor's spirits lifted, making jokes in the dark hinned
beside the dead. Whether she survived was never confirmed in
the papers, only that a rescuer had expressed hopes.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
She might have. Tina Morgan, the younger survivor at the disaster,
said the scars from that day will never heal, It
will never go away. For thousands of people involved, this
will never go away. It's major trauma, she told the
Australian Associated Press. Miss Morgan, then fourteen, was tramped for
at least five hours, with her back injured and a
(46:02):
piece of timber piercing her chest. Quote from the Grenville
rail disaster that changed to Australia the ABC News seventeenth
January twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Surgeons on site were forced to perform amputations in order
to save lives. One man lost a foot to get free,
another required a second imputation on site. The injuries were harrowing,
crushed pelvises, shattered legs, dislocated joints, and a lot of
internal bleeding worsened by the heat and the pressure. Some
(46:32):
survivors freed after hours of entrapment died minutes later, not
from visible trauma, but from, as Matthew mentioned, crush syndrome.
At that point in time. It was a poorly understood
condition where toxins flood the bloodstream once the pressure is released,
overwhelming the kidneys and the heart. Granville would be the
disaster that toret Australian emergency services about the realities of
(46:54):
crush syndrome, leading to lasting changes in treatment and triage procedures.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Power lines had to be cut one by one before
cranes could begin lifting pieces of the clap's bridge. This
stifling heat sapped the rescuers. Compressed air did little to
ease the sweltering conditions. Emergency lights strung through the carriages
added to the heat. Seven trap passengers suffered potentially lethal
crush syndrome, in which potassium acids and other toxins built
(47:22):
up in a person's traplens can be released quickly once
they're freed, causing life threatening heart, respiratory and kidney issues.
Three died from it. Nevertheless, Grenville became an object lesson
in treating crush syndrome. Quote from Granville, the rail disaster
that changes to Australia, BBC News, seventeenth January twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
The process is developed for dealing with crushed syndrome would
later be utilized during the Threadbow landslide in nineteen ninety
six with Stuart Diver, as well as in many other disasters.
At the scene, water was sprayed lightly across the entire wreckage.
The possibility of fire never left the mine of those present.
LPG gas continued to leak into the already unbreathable air,
(48:05):
further complicating rescue. This forced the use of hand tools exclusively,
as sparks from electric pools or even static discharge could
prove deadly. The New South Wales Fire Brigade stood by
with poses at the ready, prepared to douse flames in
case of the worst. Meanwhile, nearby Prospect County Council electricians
(48:26):
worked feverishly to isolate the fifteen hundred volt power lines
that had fallen across the site. These lines, once used
to drive the electric locomotive, now posed an unpredictable and
invisible threat. An electrical spark at any moment could ignite
the gas, or worse, electrocute or rescuer.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I've talked with Trevor King, a Salvation Army man who
had been in the thick of the devastation from the beginning.
The night before the accident, he had been up all
night counseling drug addicts. This was his third day without sleep.
I've been around, he said. I was a proferredtional fighter
for years, and I'm used to blood and gore. I've
been called out by the police to accidents where you
(49:05):
need a crowbar to get people out, but I've never
seen anything like this. It was so horrifying. I couldn't
even have imagined it was possible. You just couldn't recognize anybody.
I've been offering moral support, liaising with the police, and
going down where the men are working and talking to them.
I know when a man comes to the limits of
(49:25):
his endurance. I've seen that before. Now I've seen men
pass that point and go on with new reserves of strength.
I saw a young police kid out who was keeping
everyone happy and smiling, even though he was carrying a
mangled body from the wreckage. Later, I visited the temporary
morgue and found the same young man quietly sobbing in
the corner. Ten minutes later I saw him outside again,
(49:48):
peering everybody up. That's just pure courage. Quote from the
Australian Women's Weekly, Wednesday, the second of February nineteen seventy seven,
page forty eight. Australia is worst train disaster, and that,
ladies and gentlemen, is where we are going to wrap
it up before the inevitable investigation into what occurred caused
(50:10):
the deadly Grenville trained disaster. I'll be coming up next
week and take a little bit of heart too, you know,
I like, I know, I know the world feels like
there aren't anyone out there willing to help, and that
we all feel very isolated and desensitized. You know, we
do have a tremendous spirit, all of us do. We
(50:31):
have this tremendous spirit of character and humanity. You know,
people collapsing, picking themselves back up again and going back
out even though they're exhausted and they're tired. And this
happens around the world all the time. You know, the
greatest trick that has ever been pulled on people is
(50:52):
that we all hate each other, or that we all
want each other to suffer the worst. It's just not true.
It's a very small minority of the peopleeople at the
top trying to encourage those down in the bottom to
negatively affect each other. But I tell you what, in
times like this, you really do get to see the
endurance of the human spirit. Just one more quick reminder,
(51:16):
don't forget that we are changing formats, so you've got
one more episode and then the episode after that's going
to be a fun film commentary. And the film that
we're going to be covering is The Howling three the
Mass Soupials, because there's a lot to talk about in
that movie. It's a really good.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
One to start with, and Holly's never seen that.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
So we just as I said, Holly needs to take
a little bit of time to just not be working.
So that's why we're doing that. So bear with us.
I promise the commentaries are not just going to be
two people sitting on account watching television. We're going to
(51:58):
be drawing on seven years of podcasting. We're going to
be drawing on our book series, We're going to be
drawing on our expertise in osplitation, and we're going to
be bringing up some really interesting things, especially because, as
far as I know, this is the only film to
feature marsupial werewolf, and we've covered most of the marsupials
in Australia, so we're going to be able to talk
(52:19):
about the biology of a Werewolf Marsupial, so there's a
lot of fun there to be had Before we let
you go, don't forget. You can reach out to us
so you can find us on your social media of
choice just typing we Crap Australia into the search bar.
You can also send us a good old fashioned email
Week Crap in Australia at gmail dot com. If you
want to help out the show, you can find us
on Patreon Friendly five dollars USC a month. You get
(52:41):
access to bonus minisodes as well as mainline episodes released
to you. You can also grab our book series Week
Crap in Australia. Volumes one to five are available now
from our great mates at Impactcomics dot com dot au.
As I mentioned in the previous episode, the place that
Impact is located, which has Gribben, a place in the
center of Canberra, is currently impeded with a lot of
(53:04):
instructor construction going on. Small businesses live and die by.
We don't want Amazon to be the only name in
the game because as soon as there is monopoly, people
get exploited, so we've got to make sure that we're
looking after our local small businesses. Impact Comics have been
a great supporter of our work in all the different
things that we've done, be it me writing comics, or
(53:27):
working on YouTube videos or doing this podcast. Impact Comics
has been with us every step of the way. So
if you can please support them Impactcomics dot com dot au,
pick up the book, grab a comic. Christmas will be
here before you know it, so if you can help
them out, we would really appreciate it. You can grab
a copy of the paperback internationally via our prent on
(53:48):
demand service Lulu dot com. That's Lulu dot com, or
you can pick up a digital copy from the Amazon
Kindle store, and as is our custom, we give Polly
the final words.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
So I actually managed to find the photo of the seats.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yes, I have seen that photo. I didn't realize they
were seats. I thought that was debris.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
No, those are the seats lined up in two rows.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
That's fucking brutal. Yeah, are those your final words?
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Those are my final words? Go have a look at it.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
As trove posted on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Proves has that being old. Post the link to the
actual article and you can go through the photos because
there's a lot of like two page spreads, but there
are nobodies, there's nothing gruesome. It's just you know, these
are the rescue workers and this is what happened.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Yeah, we would never post that sort of stuff. Just FYI,
we're not gore hounds. That's not going to be posted
on our Facebook. But yes, it will give you an
idea of exactly what occurred. Well, thank you so much
for joining us LAIS and gentlemen, please stay safe, be
kind to each other, especially in these times. We'll see
you all next week for more we Crap in Australia.
(54:55):
Until then, bye for now They The Weird Crap In
Australia podcast is produced by Holly and Matthew Soul for
(55:17):
the Modern Meltdown. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate
and review on your favorite podcatching app
A strange, spiraling white light was spotted in the early
morning sky over Sydney, with even skeptical witnesses wondering if
it was a UFO. They were last seen on the
beach with a tall man and that's the best description
police have ever had of it.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
More than seventeen years after Harold Holt disappeared into raging
surf at Chevy a Beach, his widow has finally revealed
his last romantic words docky, terrifying, mesmerizing. That's the way
a number of Australians have described the alleged encounter with
the YOWI.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's time for the Weird Crap In Australian podcast. Welcome
to the week Crap In Australia Podcast. I'm your host
Matthew Sol joining me for another episode. Of course, is
the researcher extraordinary? Holysol Hey, And this is episode three
(00:55):
hundred and seventy five. Now, I don't think, ladies and gentleman,
that we have done a disaster episode since.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Fred Bow Holly, No, No, No, Beaconsfield and then Westgate
I think is after that.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
As well, so true true, So we have had a
couple Well, it's definitely time to delve back into that, Paul,
but before we do an announced today's topic just very quickly.
I did mention this on the previous episode, but I
think it's worth repeating over this episode and the next episode.
So we're just changing formats a little bit here. Instead
of doing four episodes a month under our old format,
(01:35):
we're going to be doing three episodes a month under
the old format, which is still going to be written
in research by Holly of.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Course, classic weird crap in Australia.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Classic weird crap in Australia. But Holline needs a break.
She's currently working fifty hours a week and is doing
twenty hours on the podcast and it's just not sustainable.
So we need to relax some of that burden. So
what I'm going to be doing is taking over one
week a month. You're going to get a Matt commentary.
We're going to record a commentary track for an osplitation film.
(02:05):
We have quite a collection there. We could actually do
this for many, many years. We don't know how long
we're going to do it, just until things relax a
little bit, get a few more episodes in the can,
and you know, ready to release. So we're just going
to take that small tweak to the format that's going
to be starting after this two parter and without further ado,
(02:27):
let's announce this the Grenville train disaster. May just a
little bit of a listener warning here. This one's going
to be rough. Take it away, Holly.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It was six nine am on Tuesday, the eighteenth of
January nineteen seventy seven when a standard eight carriage suburban
train left Mount Victoria Station in the Blue Mountains found
for Sydney's Central Station. Doo, thank you good Okay? Can
I think the train designated as the six ZHO nine
(03:03):
Supplementary inter Urban Service.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Jesus, can't they just call it train? Go onto the suburbs? No. No.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Was hauled by a forty six class electric locomotive, a bulky,
weather worn unit designated number four six two zero. This
particular locomotive, powered by overhead lines that delivered fifteen hundred
volts of electricity, had been in operation since the early
nineteen fifties and had a known mechanical history, including a
(03:32):
prior derailment at Wenworth Falls in nineteen sixty five. That
earlier incident was attributed to an irregularity in the train's
brake pipe operation, causing a freight derailment. The issue was repaired,
the scratches and dents were smoothed out, and four to
six two zero was put back into service without fault.
On this particular morning in January, four six two zero
(03:56):
was hauling eight carriages, a longer trail than usual. Standard
weekday operation often only saw six carriages, which were usually
fall to standing room only. These carriages were of an
older timber construction, originally designed for country travel. Do you
remember the old You probably wouldn't. I think we saw
this when we went on Zigzag when I was a kid.
(04:19):
You know how in Harry Potter and who hold up?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Hold up? Hold up? Hold up? Before we go down
the Harry Potter trail. What's Zigzag?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Okay? Zigzag Railway is a historic railway line that goes
through the Blue Mountains. When I was a kid, it
was the thing to do. They closed down, I think
due to lack of funds because people were like, I've
been on it once, I don't need to be on
it again. They reopened it recently, and then I think
they've closed it down again.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I remember, I'm pretty sure I saw it. Actually, it's
a steam train, right, Yes it is. Yeah, so we
were visiting your family and.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We were No, it's not that one.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
It wasn't the one that we saw between Buxton.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And Picked and no, I don't know, that's just a
stand it.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It was just a regular steam train for whatever reason
that day.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, because the train museums.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But yeah, I am aware of the old Blue Mountains
tourist route.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, that's what it was. But in the Harry Potter
movies when they're on the train and you see the
individual compartments, yep, that's the way that these carriages were
originally constructed to have those individual compartments.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I've been on that train.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Many at once featured in those internal compartment walls, giving
passengers a degree of privacy, but these had been removed
in a retro fit years earlier in an attempt to
modernize the carriages with open planned seating because everything in
the world needs to be fucking open plan. Unfortunately, this
left the carriage roofs supporting only by their sides and
(05:48):
end walls, without poles or supports that one would find
in a modern train carriage. All the weight of the
roof was being held up by the walls.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I'm sure that will never be a problem. Absolutely nothing.
The train comprised day carriages hauled by an electric locomotive
number four six to zero, with a driver and an
engine man, his observer, and the only other crew member
a guard in the guard's compartment in the rear of
the train. The train reached Paramatter without underward incident and
(06:16):
departed there at eight ten am with at least four
hundred and sixty nine passengers. Quote from formal investigation of
an accident on or about the Upper Main West Way
rail Line at Grenville, the eighteenth of January nineteen seventy seven. Ah.
You gotta love those folks writing reports in the seventies,
don't you.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Seventies They still do it now.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, just simplify, simplify.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Granville train disaster a story.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Every time I do an assessment. You know what my
lecture is always say to us, simplify, Simplify, keep it concise,
keep it to the point.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yes, but this is government and they're paid by the letter,
so they have to keep adding them.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You hand it to a bureaucrat. This is the report
on water going down a waterway and how it affects
people who utilize the waterway and waterways are good. I
like waterways. When I was ten, I visited a waterway
(07:14):
report as opposed to report on local waterways.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The weather was typical of a Sydney summer morning, warm, clear,
the sort of day when the humidity begins to set
in early and.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
You don't get to see all the disgusting pollution hanging around.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
The train made its way through the scenic ridges and
cuttings of the Blue Mountains, descending slowly towards the city.
On board were commuters, children on school holidays, office workers,
and hospitality staff. Some chatted quietly, others slept, lulled by
the steady rhythm of the train's motion and the hum
of overhead power lines.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So what you're saying is just a very very standard day,
very typical day on that particular train.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Absolutely. Around eight twelve am, the train was approaching Granville
Station in Western Sydney. Just east of the station lies
a gentle left hand curve, a section of track that
had reportedly been checked and passed quality controls.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
The State president of the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Engineermen,
mister Joe Booth, sent an inspection of the track on
December seventeenth. Oh that's my birthday by a METISA machine
which records any unevenness or non alignment that showed the
rails were in perfect order. Quote from the camera time Saturday,
the twenty second of January nineteen seventy seven. Hey eight
(08:32):
track perfect in December.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Check But this track, like much of the New South
Wales network at the time, was aging worn by decades
of under investment, deferred maintenance and reliance on wartime austerity measures.
Rail fastenings, wooden sleepers, ballast conditions all had suffered since
World War II, and successive governments had delayed proper reinvestment
(08:56):
in infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, but holytich, you can't.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Tell which government was in power from the end of
World War.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
II, the Liberal Government. I don't like to just point
fingers at any particular government, though in these circumstances now,
it's not going to surprise anyone to know that a
physically conservative government like the Liberal Government is going to
be less than willing to provide money for these sort
of services. However, some responsibility does need to be owned
(09:26):
by the population. If you tell Australians, hey, we have
a growing population, our services again a bit strained. We
need to increase taxes. Let's take the GST from ten
percent to eleven percent. Do you really think the Australian
people are going to go? You know what, You're right,
there are a lot more people here and these systems
do need a bit extra funding. So yeah, we do
(09:48):
need to sacrifice a little bit more of our income
in order to help fully fund these services. Do you
think the Australian people are going to do that?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Hohlly, No, I'd say turn around and tax the corporations.
But you know that's just me.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I agree with that as well. But at the same time,
you do need to support services and infrastructure, right, But
then if you tell the Australian population that they need
to do that by contributing a little bit more tax income,
what are they going to do? Not that? Fuck these trains,
Fuck anyone who uses trains until the train derails.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Of course, As locomotive four six two zero entered that
curve near Granville, traveling at seventy eight kilometers per hour,
which was well within the designated eighty kilometer per hour limit,
the left front wheel of the engine came off the rail.
Later investigation revealed that the track's fastenings had loosened due
to poor maintenance, allowing the rails to spread the weight
(10:43):
of the engines and carriages. Coming around the corner pulled
the right rail slightly out of alignment, allowing the left
to slip from its base. The wheel hit the sleepers
and of course the train directed, but derailmen itself is
not always fatal. We covered a went out in Western
Australia regarding a member of the royal family. That worst
(11:03):
injury was spilt Scotch locomotive massive and momentum heavy continued
forward off the track, scraping along the ballast and barely
slowing down.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
The locomotive proceeded in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable condition when
it collided with one of two sets of trestles supporting
the upper deck of the Bold Streak Bridge. It careened
on from there, demolishing all eight steel stanchions of the trestle,
and finally came to a rest on its right side,
two hundred and twenty feet east of the bridge, having
(11:35):
torn up the adjoining track. In doing so, it probably
struck the foundation a lower portion of a steel electric
power line mask, steering this off at the base Carriage
one collided with the power mast, which was apparently suspended
from the overhead power lines. This mass plowed through the carriage,
demolishing the superstructure, and the carriage finally came to rest
(11:55):
partly on its side, with the detached roof on the
adjacent tracks and the walls demolished almost to floor level
of the seventy three passengers in this carriage. Eight lost
their lives and thirty four were injured. The driver and
firemen on the locomotive, although badly shaken, were not seriously injured.
Formal investigation of an accident on or about the Upper
(12:17):
Main Western Railway line at Granville on the eighteenth of
January nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Carriage III was relatively better off, remaining mostly on its feet.
It tilted a little to the left, leaning against the
retaining wall on the eastern side of the Bold Street Bridge.
There were a few minor injuries, but nothing serious in
this carriage. Carriages three and four were next to pass
beneath the Bold Street Bridge, an overpass that connected the
(12:43):
main Granville thoroughfare with a suburb of Paris Park. The bridge,
built in the nineteen fifties, had undergone a curious modification
shortly after construction. Originally built to code, or so it
was said, the bridge was later found to be about
a meter too low to accommodate vehicle traffic safely. To
address this, additional concrete was poured atop the existing surface,
(13:07):
tripling the load on the bridge's vertical supports. These supports
rested directly in the railway cutting beneath, and managed to
remain upright under their increased load for decades. Carriage three
entered the shadow of the Bold Street Bridge just seconds
behind the locomotive. Then came Carriage four. Both came to
a stop directly underneath the structure, with the last three
(13:29):
to four meters of Carriage three underneath and the last
five to six meters of Carriage four remaining into the
open air behind them. Carriages five through eight remained unaffected
by the derailment itself. They were basically parked on the
western side of the bridge, still on their rails, though
the passengers had no way of knowing what had just
transpired up ahead. For all they knew, there was a
(13:52):
small jolt and then they rolled to a stop.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, they're the lucky ones in this particular case. Holly.
We have a quote the driver felt a bump or
a bang just west of the Bold Street bridge, and
this was the result of the train's crushing points. The
train had continued for some distance before hitting the leading
end of a check rail. It had traveled a further
forty eight meters before mounting the concrete sections of the
(14:16):
stensions of the overhead bridge. Quote from the Cambra Times, Tuesday,
twenty second of February nineteen seventy seven, page seven, Granville
train inquiry.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
As you can imagine, there was a massive bang which
caught the attention of multiple people in the surrounding area.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I heard something that sounded like an earthquake. I felt
the impact there she missus. Jean Memory had witnessed the scene.
Quote from the Camera Times, Wednesday, nineteenth of January nineteen
seventy seven, page three, last five were rescued.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Fifteen seconds after the train hit the bridge supports. The
Bold Street bridge, which was still framed, concrete laid and
burdened with two lanes of morning traffic, collapsed directly onto
carriages three and four, with devastating speed and unimaginable force.
Five hundred and sixty tons of bridge structure and vehicles
(15:10):
dropped into the rail cutting, crushing the timber carriages below
like matchboxes. That's more than a quarter of the weight
of the West Great Bridge section that fell in nineteen seventy,
landing on wooden roofs of train carriages, no longer designed
to hold up its own weight.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Unfortunately, the trestles supporting the bridge gave way, and with
approximately two hundred and fifty pounds of the northern span
and approximately three hundred and twenty tons of the central
span of the bridge falling onto positions of carriages three
and four. The roofs of carriages were crushed in, the
signs were burst outwards, the height of the carriages from
floor level reduced in some cases to inches. The result
(15:53):
was catastrophic. Quote from thermal investigation of an accident on
or about the ut Main Western Railway line at Grenville
on the eighteenth January nineteen seventy seven. Going to chew
through that very quickly going forward.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I think we can just call it formal investigation from
now on safety.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
This speeking sounds good.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
The concrete laden with reinforcement and still holding the cars
that were crossing at the time of collapse, including a van,
a sedan, and surprisingly a motorcycle landed without warning. Passengers
on the train who were adjusting their coats or glancing
at their watches only seconds earlier died in their seats.
Some were compressed so completely that their shoulder joints were
(16:36):
discovered below knee level. Forensic pathologists would later confirm that
many died instantly, but others lived on some for hours
in beneath the wreckage.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
All right, so using our little friend chat GPT here,
I'm going to talk to you about the immediate effects
on the human body. So first and foremost, we have
instantaneous ushing. The force from five hundred and seventy tons
approximate combined weight of the falling spans would completely crush
the structure of the train carriage, collapsing the roof into
(17:09):
the cabin space. Any passengers within it would be compressed
between the roof and the seat floor structure. As Holly
just mentioned, that was inches. In some case, people would
be suffering from massive blunt force TRAMA. Bodies would experience
extreme blunt force trauma, with likely immediate destruction of the skull, spine, chest, cavity,
(17:33):
and pelvis. This would be instantaneous death would occur in milliseconds,
if not faster. The thing Obviously, this would have happened
a lot quicker when it came to the billionaires underwater
sub that went to visit the Titanic Hollie. But we're
sort of dealing with a very similar sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I mean, the timeframe is almost the same, is it
really almost? I mean it doesn't take much longer than
that be a brain to like the implosion, Yes, it
happened inward and that just killed everybody. But this one,
with the massive crush, it's just it drops and five
hundred and sixty tons it drops fast.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Absolutely. Furthermore, compression injuries. The forces would cause total crush syndrome,
where limbs, organs, and titus are flattened beyond recognition. Bones
would be pulverized, internal organs would be ruptured or expelled.
Then you have amputation and displacement. The sides of the
carriages were burst outward, indicating lateral explosive forces. This can
(18:33):
lead to the severing of limbs to capitations or complete dismemberment,
depending on where individuals were located relative to the rupture. Now,
when it comes to survivability, chat dpt says there is
virtually none. Actually, one thing that it does sort of
remind me of actually is the Twin Towers when they collapsed,
(18:55):
all those people who got caught between slabs of concrete.
That's why identification was incredibly difficult in some cases, because
at some points you only had the very vaguus remains
of what used to be a person. So effectively, these
two carriages just turned into a broken mess of scattered
(19:17):
remains of train and people or combined together into one
horrific mess.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
There was a twelve page spread in I believe it
was the Women's Weekly, which Matthew is about to quote here,
that has all of the photos of after everyone was removed,
Like once they pulled the slabs off, they show you
what the train looked like underneath and stuff like that.
So if you're curious, you can go look for it.
(19:44):
That's it truth.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I'm actually having a look at some of the images
right now, Holly.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Like match sticks just flat.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
There's just no way you walk away from that, Like
there's yeah, you're right, Like yeah, it's like a I
sort of think of build a rest like you think
of a compressed tube, right, like you think of a
steel pipe for example. You know how you have to
crimp them sometimes. Yeah, right, you know, both ends of
(20:19):
these train carriages look like they've been crimped to nearly
nearly perfect level. You know, there's the normal train carriage,
and then it turns into a crimp and then it
just is flattened two flats. You could possibly make it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Like it's cut off in a ninety degree in angalism.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, it's almost like a platform. I suppose it's almost
turned into a platform into the middle of the train.
My god, that is absolutely horrific.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
If there's a photo there, I don't know if you
can see it. There is one there where you can
see where the seats were seatbacks have just been basically
pulled concerting and pushed back into the one behind it.
Those seats are what kept that four or five inches
of carriage from being crushed. So there was actually a
survivor who remained in that aisle for hours between those seats.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
That is horrific. I would hate. I can't even imagine
that what that would be like that intensity, you know
what it actually it reminds me of that film we watched,
you know about the Peruvian.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
The ones on the mountain.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, the ones on the mountain and Peruvian or Kilean
the soccer team I think on the Andes.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Remember the scene where as the crash started and people
were crumpled by the seats. Yeah, yeah, they got off
better than those people did.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, all right, And we have a quote as only said,
I hope we've painted a picture for you. There's it's
fucking horrific. We were crawling through the wrecked carriage. It
was dark like a dungeon. Everything was flattened. Suddenly a
white face peered at us and a young girl said,
I'm alive. I'm alive. We got her out after five hours.
(22:15):
Kept talking to her and she'd smile at us. She
was worried about her legs, but we kept saying how
are you, and she'd smile again. Quote from The Woman's
Weekly Wednesday, the second of February nineteen seventy seven, page
forty eight, a Australia's worst trained disaster.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Among the first responders was Father Michael Champion, a local
Roman Catholic priest. Reports differed slantly on his knee. Some
sources called him Let's Champion, but all agree on his actions.
He was the first to climb into the mangled wreckage.
He prayed with the engine, He ministered the last rites
to the dead and dying. He offered reassurance and what
(22:51):
little comfort he could to the dozens of people wedged
into the narrow confines of the crushed carriages.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
A Roman Catholic father Michael Campion reported that he saw
at least five passengers still alive in the wreckage of
one of the carriages, the dozens of others who appeared
to be dead. Father Campion said the people sitting on
the left hand side of the train had some chance
of survival, those on the right all dead. Many of
the bodies which twisted, and the interior of one carriage
(23:21):
was soaked in blood. Father Campion described the scene as unbelievable.
He added, there's just nothing anyone can do for the
victims at the moment. The right side of the trainers
crushed into tiny pieces. Some of the injured I was
able to see were grown for help. It's horrible they
had no chance. Quote from the Cambra Times, Wednesday, nineteenth
(23:43):
January nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So the reason why one side of the train was
a little bit less crushed than the other so underneath
each of the spans there was two trucks, so there
was one going into the station one coming. Because the
train knocked out the support on the right side of
the train, it meant that that side of the bridge dropped.
(24:10):
So the bit on the left that was connected to
i'll call it the mainland, remained standing mostly so there
was a little pocket in that little triangle then where
survivors could be found. But anyone who ended up on
the wrong side of that triangle didn't survive. Did that
make sense?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah? Yeah, you're basically saying that it collapsed on a
very specific angle, which sort of it's sort of sort
of hard to explain.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
One end remained connected to the land, the other end
fell into the hole.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
The trains driver, Edward Olowentz, and his assistant both survived
the initial derailment. Olan Wentz was fifty two years old
and had driven trains for eighteen years. He had an
unpl lemish record, and the inquiry would later clear him
of all faults. Though bruised and suffering from shock, he
managed to pull himself out from the cab. What he
(25:10):
saw behind him. No one can imagine the roof of
the first carriage had been completely torn off, the second
was tilted but largely intact. The carriage three it ended
suddenly shorter than it had been, and from his vantage
point he could not see carriage four at all around him.
(25:30):
The rescue operations began.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Mister jack Haw, who lives opposite the bridge, sad I
was hosing out the bird cages on the front verandah
when there was a terrific bang. Two local butchers ran
into the bridge, saw one car was just balancing, and
tied a rope to it so the people could get out.
As I watched or saw that, most of the passengers
were stunned, and it took them a while to realize
what had happened. They eventually climbed down out of the carriages.
(25:57):
Quote from The Camera Times, Wednesday, nineteenth of January nineteen
seventy seven, page three. God had his hand on me.
I really, I really really struggle with this during people
like Look, everyone accepts grief, Everyone accepts disasters like this
in their own way, shape or form. I think I've
explained this before for me. You know, the inherent chaos
(26:19):
of the universe is pretty fucking fair to me. Right
one day you could be walking down the street and
you get hit by on the back of the head
by a bucket that falls off a construction site, you know,
twenty feet above you. Right, Random shit happens can happen
any of us. That's fair. I can live in that world.
I don't understand how some people can turn around and say, oh,
(26:41):
well God was protecting me, But what about the people
in courages three and four them, Like, how do they
square that up?
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Well, obviously not a single person in those carriages was
a Christian or Howurst or whatever they specifically believe in.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And that's why I have a little bit like, look,
everyone going to cope in their own way. I get that,
I really really do. But at that point it almost
feels disrespectful, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Oh, it absolutely is. It's saying that my life is
more important because my imaginary friend values as such, put
all those people in.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
It, and yeah, so I can live with my I
suppose that's why. That's my philosophy, isn't it. You know,
And grief is so multifaceted and complicated, you were going
to look for ways to you know, rationalize, rationalize. Yeah, absolutely,
that's the perfect word for it. So I shouldn't get angry.
(27:39):
I should just accept that everyone has to rationalize disaster
and grief and chaos in their own way, and that
my way is just different and their way is different.
Stupid counseling course making me feel feelings. It's been a
fantastic course. Actually, I think previously to learning about mental
health and learning how how to help people with it
(28:01):
and even to help myself with it, I think I
would just sort of sit in that feeling without sort
of thinking that feeling through. And it's interesting that, you know,
I feel like my anger decreases the more I rationalize
through you know why I am feeling that way, why
I am responding to that way. There's a little little
(28:23):
it'll be a bit of free mental health advice for everybody.
Rationalize everything, well, you know, rationalize why you feel the
way you feel. So, for example, I felt pretty angry
that that person was like, well God spared me, but
fuck these other people. I was like, well, you know,
grief is multifaceted. This is the way this person has
(28:46):
been able to console themselves and rationalize what has happened
to them. You know, they're believing in God's plan. Their
way is different to my way, but both ways are
equally valid and therefore I'm less angry makes sense sure.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Rescue operations began immediately. Granville locals rushed to the scene.
Emergency services arrived in wait, New South Wales, police from
as far away as Liverpool, Strathfield and Blackdown, ambulance crews,
firefighters and railway workers. Chainsaws were initially used to cut
through the exposed wooden roofs of the carriages trying to
(29:26):
access survivors, but danger still loomed for both survivors and rescuers.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Petroleum gas leaking from crack cylinders on the Grenville train
had seriously hampered rescue operations at the crash scene. The
judicial inquiry was called today. The police officer in charge
of the rescue operations, Inspector D R. Williams, said the
gas was discovered about seventy five minutes after the crash.
That was our worst step back of all, he said.
(29:52):
We were preparing to use oxy cutters oxyacetylene equipment, but
Quinnitt it was a low pressure gas coming from bottles
on the train. Everything had to be cut by other means.
The gas bottles used for heating the carriages were about
the crushed and buried and leaking slowly and were almost
impossible to reach. Quote from the Camera Times, Tuesday, the
first of March nineteen seventy seven, page seven, Leaking gas
(30:15):
hampered train rescue.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
So not only do you have the unstable remains of
those carriages, the two that were compromised. Not only do
you have the debris of the bridge settling. Not only
do you have the cars that were on that bridge
having their own issues. You then have gas cylinders underneath
all of this, leaking gas and getting ready to blow.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, you're trying to conduct a rescue operation while two
bombs are slowly ticking down under your feet. It was
six bombs, but yes, well six bombs. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
The gas filled the air beneath the collapse bridge, displacing
oxygen and posing an explosion risk. Any spark, one from
a power a radio, or even a static discharge could
ignite the site. As such power tools were being from
the scene, rescuers were forced to rely on hand tools
such as crowbars, hammers, and hack saws. Working in stifling heat.
(31:15):
They're breathing shallow and deliberate to avoid breathing in gas
if they happen to smell it, there's actually a news
footage on YouTube of the breaking news of this happening,
and you can see footage of someone halfway up a
pole trying to cut a chain with a handsaw.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well, I mean, it's all you can really do, and
I mean, like, let's I'm going to be brutally honest here.
Most of the people were going to be gone anyway.
Ones who survived. Do you know much about crush syndrome.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I remember some of it from when we did the
Threadbow episode.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So one of the biggest problems with crushed syndrome is
that essential the cells are ruptured and stuff starts to
leak out into your body. It's all well and good
when our body is working properly and all of our
minerals and nutrients it contained, but during something like crush syndrome,
you can end up with things like passium places that
shouldn't be, causing organ failure. So for some people who
(32:18):
suffer crush injuries taken to hospital and then unfortunately will
die a week later because of the rupturing of their cells.
Looking at some of these photos here, and I'm not
saying that the right thing to do is to stop
rescue efforts. I'm not saying that in the slightest miracles
can happen. They happen every day. But what I am
(32:41):
saying is that I applaud them for trying their best
and working as fast as they could. But I don't
think they have to feel any responsibility that their lack
of equipment due to the gas leak would have saved
more lives.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Does that make sense, Yeah, I think they on the
balance of probability, but losing one hundred percent of people
to an explosion is a lot worse than losing ninety
nine percent to a crush.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
That's right, you know, because that is the rescuers, potentially survivors,
emergency support people, volunteers.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Potentially bystanders who are up the top watching all this.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And it's not right to sacrifice the living for the
already dead or will be dead. And that's a pet
That is a terrible thing to help to do and
I never want to be in that position myself. No,
I would not wish that on anyone else, But that
is the truth.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
New South Wales Fire Brigade units would deploy to ventilate
the site. They used fine water mists to suppress the
presence of gas vapors and to prevent ignition. But the
danger wasn't just from the gas. The bridge was still settling.
One slab shifted two inches after the first declaration that
the rescue efforts needed to be paused. That shift trapped
(34:04):
two rescuers and crushed a generator. It was one of
several moments that later led to new national standards for
safety during rescue operations, principles later applied at disasters like
Threadbow landslide and the Beacons Filled Mind collapse.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Then the slab came down. Slab shifted down two inches
even while our fellows, pinning two rescuers and crushing one
of our porter power outfits like butter. This is when
one of the doctors wanted one of our fellows to leave.
He wouldn't leave, and neither would the doctor. Because we
got a few surprises. People speaking to us that later died,
(34:39):
and an old fellow that said, don't worry about me,
I'm done for He said, you rescue the young people.
Imagine that he died. Quo from Grenville rail Disaster January eighteenth,
nineteen seventy seven at Western nine di I uploaded a
YouTube February the fifteen twenty and eleven.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
The rescue is stretched on. Victims were found alive beneath
the bridge's cross beams in small pockets of survivable space,
where structural members had held up just enough weight to
create twenty four inch gaps. That's two feet.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I'd be dead in this instance. I don't survive this
at all. I'm too tall.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
The fact that anyone fucking survived in any circumstance.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
That's what always like. The human body is so fucking frail,
and yet under the right circumstances, you can fling a
human across a football field and under the right circumstances
they can survive.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
You can shove a steel rod through someone's brain and
they can still survive.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
People have jumped out of planes and their parachute hasn't
popped and they have survived the fall. You know. It's
just it's fascinating to me that we can be both
at the same time so incredibly frail but also so
squishy and malleable that we can survive those extreme instances,
(36:13):
And it's just very difficult to comprehend.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
In order, I think to have survived this, you would
have had to have been hit on the heads so
fast and drops so fast and fallen in just the
right way to go between those two rows of seats
or underneath a crossbeam, because in any other circumstance, that
thing is just going to keep coming down on you.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I think that's a fair assumption to make, actually, because
if you think about it, you know, what are your
three steps here? Whack to the back of the head
pushes you forward very quickly, but you're down on the
ground very quickly, so you curl up after having a
head injury. Everything collapses around you in just the right
ways to give you that little pocket of space. I
(36:57):
think that's probably a fair assumption to make, that Holly.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Most of those found alive were in the aisle of carriage.
Four bags of ice were packed around them to prevent
blood loss and swelling in the extream summer heat. Surgeons
crawled through the wreckage to perform emergency amputations. One young
man had a foot removed on site in order to
free him. Another was rescued after a partial walpinning him
(37:22):
was delicately braced with timber and moved by hand. But
there were of course miracle stories coming out too from
survivors who almost weren't.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I would argue the guy who had his foot amputated
to save his life was probably very happy with the outcome.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I'd rather sacrifice this little bit than sacrifice all of.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
This sacrificed part of me to the metallic gods, Holly,
I can tell you I was very happy to lose
the top of my thumb and not my whole hand.
You know what I mean, yep. Several of those on
the train said they owed their lives to the fact
that they had moved from the crush carriages minutes before
preparing to leave the train. Mister Bill Linley twenty eight,
(38:02):
said he had just walked clear of the section hit
by the bridge when the accident happened without warning. The
roof came down and knocked me to the floor, he said.
When I booked back, the carriages were crushed flat. It
was like looking at the end of a wall. Mister Linney,
a technical officer, got out without a scratch. I don't
believe in lucky, said, I believe that God had his
(38:24):
hand on me. I was so close to being crushed.
John Stewart sixteen said I had just come out of
the toilet at the rear of the carriage when there
was a sound like thunder. Then I saw a wall
of bricks and concrete crash through the roof about a
meter in front of me. I ran out of the
back of the carriage and must have just staggered around
on the rails. I must have been stunned. All I
(38:46):
remember is a lot of people running from the station
and a few people screaming inside the train. John of
Blacktown caught the train for the first time today. He
was traveling to Sydney to collect a jacket he had
left in a restaurant. It must be the luckiest person
in the world today, he said. But you said he
had helped three six bodies from the carriage in which
he had been traveling. There were three old people and
(39:07):
three young girls, and they were all dead. He said,
I'm just going to go home, go to sleep, try
and forget about all of it. I'm very tired. Quote
from the Canberra Times, Wednesday, nineteenth January nineteen seventy seven.
God had his hand on me.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Now, I assume that counselor Matt would prescribe therapy to
everybody here.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
One hundred percent. And I am not a counselor yet.
Just you can get in trouble by saying.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
That technically you can't also diagnose, which is why I
didn't ask you to diagnose them a shock.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
No, no, of course, Like in respect to what you
would do with these people now, I think it is
fair to say that all of them are going to
be suffering from PTSD. The symptoms that go along with that.
PTSD is multifaceted and very complicated. So a lot of
people go, oh, yeah, they hear loud noises and they
(40:01):
get scared. That's absolutely one symptom. But one symptom is
also depression and anxiety and suicidal idiation, you know, So
there's a lot of different things that go on with PTSD.
But yeah, I would recommend that all of those people
would have I think you have to go beyond I
(40:22):
think you would have to do a tandem of counseling
in psychiatry to manage a lot of those symptoms, and
probably group therapy as well. I would imagine an idea
specially specialized grief therapy as well. So in those sort
(40:43):
of circumstances, wholly these people become very, very complicated because
you have to approach them from what's from a case
management perspective. If that makes sense. So one of the
things that we're being taught actually right now is a
thing called case management, where you would have to look
at the victim, what's already in their lives and what
(41:06):
they may need. Right So it's like if they already
go to church, well, with the patient's consent, you could
actually talk to their priest so that your counseling and
the priest's spiritual counseling can sort of work together in tandem.
(41:26):
And then through the church you might be able to
find group therapy as well. So you would sort of
have to manage all of their different problems, and they're
going to be a lot of problems.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
By mid morning, the rescue seen at Granville had taken
on the look of a wartime disaster zone. Smoke, dust,
the distant wine of sirens, and the scent of blood
and burnt metal filled the air. By ten am, a
crowd of approximately three thousand people had gathered behind police lines.
Many were locals, some looking for loved ones, are simple
(42:00):
unable to stay away from the unfolding horror. I hate
looky loose, Get out of the fucking one. Yeah, all
they do is cause problems. Now you'd have a bunch
of influencers doing like TikTok dancers in front of it.
I mean at this point in time, you also had
the news people in the seventies standing they're trying to
take a video or you've got the look you lose,
trying to get on the video.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Quick, quick, let's put on the show to let's put
on our like little pants and do a little TikTok
dance in front to some sort of jazzy sort of music.
Now people may be like, come on, Matt, like that's
a bit harsh. I was watching a video the other
day of a car accident and the people who are
in the car that had the accident, right, they've jumped
(42:43):
out in front of it and done the little dance
while the other people in the car that they've hit
are calling obviously either police or their insurance company, right,
and they're doing a little TikTok dance.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
I would use that as admitting fault.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
I would too, I'd film the whole thing and and
submit that as evidence. But yeah, I think today it
would probably be even worse than what it was back
in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
As the crowds pressed in for review, police were forced
to keep pushing them back to maintain room for rescue
efforts and vehicle access.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Fucking horrendous, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (43:16):
If you are ever in a position where you are
within sight range of a disaster like this, get out
of the fucking weight and don't try and crowding. At
ten am, the first of the three motor vehicles that
had been on the Ball Street bridge at the time
of its collapse was pulled from the wreckage. The removal
of these vehicles, along with the slabs of concrete and
(43:38):
twisted rebum, was critical to reducing the weight bearing down
on the carriages. Every kilogram lifted was a potential breath
of life for someone trapped below. As the hours dragged on,
the temperature climbed. It was the middle of January, a
stray in summer. In full swing, Audible cranes were escorted
(43:59):
into the disaster site under police sirens. Urgently needed to
remove bridge segments. The wreckage posed so many safety risks
that even the weight of rescuers was considered. In one case,
police officers were ordered to climb onto the booms of
the cranes as improvised ballast, hoping their weight would counterbalance
the lifts enough to avoid secondary collapses. By midday on
(44:23):
January eighteen, fifty passengers had been transported to local hospitals.
More than two hundred and fifty personnel were now engaged
in rescue and recovery, police, firefighters, sees, volunteers, ambulance crews,
railway workers, and medical professionals. Among them were Red Cross
staff handing out blankets and water, and doctors and nurses
(44:45):
treating the wounded in triage areas set up on the
tracks and in nearby ambulances. At one point, the airline
from a portable air compressor was fed through the cracks
in the concrete in the hope that any surviving passengers
trapped in pockets of space might at least be able
to breathe. In some cases, they could hear voices, faint
(45:08):
force and desperate. In others, there was only silence. For
many death had come instantly. Others lingered, conscious, lucid and
aware of the crushing weight on their bodies. They talk
with rescuers, They described where they were. They even cracked
jokes to keep morale up. One young girl kept her
(45:31):
fellow survivor's spirits lifted, making jokes in the dark hinned
beside the dead. Whether she survived was never confirmed in
the papers, only that a rescuer had expressed hopes.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
She might have. Tina Morgan, the younger survivor at the disaster,
said the scars from that day will never heal, It
will never go away. For thousands of people involved, this
will never go away. It's major trauma, she told the
Australian Associated Press. Miss Morgan, then fourteen, was tramped for
at least five hours, with her back injured and a
(46:02):
piece of timber piercing her chest. Quote from the Grenville
rail disaster that changed to Australia the ABC News seventeenth
January twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Surgeons on site were forced to perform amputations in order
to save lives. One man lost a foot to get free,
another required a second imputation on site. The injuries were harrowing,
crushed pelvises, shattered legs, dislocated joints, and a lot of
internal bleeding worsened by the heat and the pressure. Some
(46:32):
survivors freed after hours of entrapment died minutes later, not
from visible trauma, but from, as Matthew mentioned, crush syndrome.
At that point in time. It was a poorly understood
condition where toxins flood the bloodstream once the pressure is released,
overwhelming the kidneys and the heart. Granville would be the
disaster that toret Australian emergency services about the realities of
(46:54):
crush syndrome, leading to lasting changes in treatment and triage procedures.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Power lines had to be cut one by one before
cranes could begin lifting pieces of the clap's bridge. This
stifling heat sapped the rescuers. Compressed air did little to
ease the sweltering conditions. Emergency lights strung through the carriages
added to the heat. Seven trap passengers suffered potentially lethal
crush syndrome, in which potassium acids and other toxins built
(47:22):
up in a person's traplens can be released quickly once
they're freed, causing life threatening heart, respiratory and kidney issues.
Three died from it. Nevertheless, Grenville became an object lesson
in treating crush syndrome. Quote from Granville, the rail disaster
that changes to Australia, BBC News, seventeenth January twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
The process is developed for dealing with crushed syndrome would
later be utilized during the Threadbow landslide in nineteen ninety
six with Stuart Diver, as well as in many other disasters.
At the scene, water was sprayed lightly across the entire wreckage.
The possibility of fire never left the mine of those present.
LPG gas continued to leak into the already unbreathable air,
(48:05):
further complicating rescue. This forced the use of hand tools exclusively,
as sparks from electric pools or even static discharge could
prove deadly. The New South Wales Fire Brigade stood by
with poses at the ready, prepared to douse flames in
case of the worst. Meanwhile, nearby Prospect County Council electricians
(48:26):
worked feverishly to isolate the fifteen hundred volt power lines
that had fallen across the site. These lines, once used
to drive the electric locomotive, now posed an unpredictable and
invisible threat. An electrical spark at any moment could ignite
the gas, or worse, electrocute or rescuer.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I've talked with Trevor King, a Salvation Army man who
had been in the thick of the devastation from the beginning.
The night before the accident, he had been up all
night counseling drug addicts. This was his third day without sleep.
I've been around, he said. I was a proferredtional fighter
for years, and I'm used to blood and gore. I've
been called out by the police to accidents where you
(49:05):
need a crowbar to get people out, but I've never
seen anything like this. It was so horrifying. I couldn't
even have imagined it was possible. You just couldn't recognize anybody.
I've been offering moral support, liaising with the police, and
going down where the men are working and talking to them.
I know when a man comes to the limits of
(49:25):
his endurance. I've seen that before. Now I've seen men
pass that point and go on with new reserves of strength.
I saw a young police kid out who was keeping
everyone happy and smiling, even though he was carrying a
mangled body from the wreckage. Later, I visited the temporary
morgue and found the same young man quietly sobbing in
the corner. Ten minutes later I saw him outside again,
(49:48):
peering everybody up. That's just pure courage. Quote from the
Australian Women's Weekly, Wednesday, the second of February nineteen seventy seven,
page forty eight. Australia is worst train disaster, and that,
ladies and gentlemen, is where we are going to wrap
it up before the inevitable investigation into what occurred caused
(50:10):
the deadly Grenville trained disaster. I'll be coming up next
week and take a little bit of heart too, you know,
I like, I know, I know the world feels like
there aren't anyone out there willing to help, and that
we all feel very isolated and desensitized. You know, we
do have a tremendous spirit, all of us do. We
(50:31):
have this tremendous spirit of character and humanity. You know,
people collapsing, picking themselves back up again and going back
out even though they're exhausted and they're tired. And this
happens around the world all the time. You know, the
greatest trick that has ever been pulled on people is
(50:52):
that we all hate each other, or that we all
want each other to suffer the worst. It's just not true.
It's a very small minority of the peopleeople at the
top trying to encourage those down in the bottom to
negatively affect each other. But I tell you what, in
times like this, you really do get to see the
endurance of the human spirit. Just one more quick reminder,
(51:16):
don't forget that we are changing formats, so you've got
one more episode and then the episode after that's going
to be a fun film commentary. And the film that
we're going to be covering is The Howling three the
Mass Soupials, because there's a lot to talk about in
that movie. It's a really good.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
One to start with, and Holly's never seen that.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
So we just as I said, Holly needs to take
a little bit of time to just not be working.
So that's why we're doing that. So bear with us.
I promise the commentaries are not just going to be
two people sitting on account watching television. We're going to
(51:58):
be drawing on seven years of podcasting. We're going to
be drawing on our book series, We're going to be
drawing on our expertise in osplitation, and we're going to
be bringing up some really interesting things, especially because, as
far as I know, this is the only film to
feature marsupial werewolf, and we've covered most of the marsupials
in Australia, so we're going to be able to talk
(52:19):
about the biology of a Werewolf Marsupial, so there's a
lot of fun there to be had Before we let
you go, don't forget. You can reach out to us
so you can find us on your social media of
choice just typing we Crap Australia into the search bar.
You can also send us a good old fashioned email
Week Crap in Australia at gmail dot com. If you
want to help out the show, you can find us
on Patreon Friendly five dollars USC a month. You get
(52:41):
access to bonus minisodes as well as mainline episodes released
to you. You can also grab our book series Week
Crap in Australia. Volumes one to five are available now
from our great mates at Impactcomics dot com dot au.
As I mentioned in the previous episode, the place that
Impact is located, which has Gribben, a place in the
center of Canberra, is currently impeded with a lot of
(53:04):
instructor construction going on. Small businesses live and die by.
We don't want Amazon to be the only name in
the game because as soon as there is monopoly, people
get exploited, so we've got to make sure that we're
looking after our local small businesses. Impact Comics have been
a great supporter of our work in all the different
things that we've done, be it me writing comics, or
(53:27):
working on YouTube videos or doing this podcast. Impact Comics
has been with us every step of the way. So
if you can please support them Impactcomics dot com dot au,
pick up the book, grab a comic. Christmas will be
here before you know it, so if you can help
them out, we would really appreciate it. You can grab
a copy of the paperback internationally via our prent on
(53:48):
demand service Lulu dot com. That's Lulu dot com, or
you can pick up a digital copy from the Amazon
Kindle store, and as is our custom, we give Polly
the final words.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
So I actually managed to find the photo of the seats.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yes, I have seen that photo. I didn't realize they
were seats. I thought that was debris.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
No, those are the seats lined up in two rows.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
That's fucking brutal. Yeah, are those your final words?
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Those are my final words? Go have a look at it.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
As trove posted on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Proves has that being old. Post the link to the
actual article and you can go through the photos because
there's a lot of like two page spreads, but there
are nobodies, there's nothing gruesome. It's just you know, these
are the rescue workers and this is what happened.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Yeah, we would never post that sort of stuff. Just FYI,
we're not gore hounds. That's not going to be posted
on our Facebook. But yes, it will give you an
idea of exactly what occurred. Well, thank you so much
for joining us LAIS and gentlemen, please stay safe, be
kind to each other, especially in these times. We'll see
you all next week for more we Crap in Australia.
(54:55):
Until then, bye for now They The Weird Crap In
Australia podcast is produced by Holly and Matthew Soul for
(55:17):
the Modern Meltdown. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate
and review on your favorite podcatching app
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