A fractured fuel discharge pipe leaked a small amount of Diesel after the 1988 Esperance train crash.
One morning in 1988, a two-man Kalgoorlie train crew took unexpected rest break in Esperance after parking a tanker train just south of Gibson.
They were just walking down the street to get a newspaper when they saw their train hurtling past backwards towards the sea.
A train crash in central Esperance caught the public imagination and of course sprouted many stories.
Now, 36 years later, Max Francis offered to set the record straight for Weekender readers.
As Mr Francis explained, the usual practise at the time was for a crew to take at least eight hours’ rest break after an eight hour’s shift, for safety reasons.
However the crew Mr Francis was sent to relieve had decided not to go straight to the Westrail barracks as soon as they knocked off.
“They went down town to a business premises that sold drinks,” he said.
“They stayed there for quite a substantial time late in the evening, when they should be in bed resting because they were on duty just after midnight.”
Mr Francis said the crew turned in much too late to take the train out of Esperance at midnight as scheduled, and woke up at about 4am when the train should have been in Norseman.
Meanwhile, Mr Francis and his colleague had been travelling down from Kalgoorlie by car to relieve the crew coming from Esperance, who were to drive the car home.
“It was not in the Norseman yard as expected,” he said.
“Merredin control had the control of the trains north and south of Kalgoorlie and they did not inform Merredin control that they had overslept and the train would be late.
“Merredin control then advised me to proceed to Salmon Gums and try and contact the train by radio, should we pass the train between Norseman and Salmon Gums.”
Mr Francis said they arrived at Salmon Gums with no word from the missing train, and no sign of it either.
“The driver then, the northbound train, got onto the public phone at Gibson and informed Merredin control that the train had broken down just to the south of the Gibson siding,” he said.
“He was to say there and we were to take over from then at that that site and then, should we be able to get the train going, we were to start toward Kalgoorlie until relieved.”
On arriving in Gibson, they found the train had a flat battery.
A safety mechanism designed to prevent speeding had activated a trip switch, and the inexperience driver did not know how to reset it.
Instead, he had tried the ignition until the battery ran out.
“So the northbound driver and his mate just hopped in the car and off back to Kalgoorlie,” Mr Francis said.
“I contacted train control and said: ‘I can’t get this engine going, it sounds like the battery is flat and the engine won’t fire’.
“So he said: ‘put down the train protection according to the railway rules, leave it where it is, put some hand brakes on, and the Station Master from Esperance will take you by car to Esperance to have your rest period.”
Another Esperance crew would then pick up the train and start driving it north, and after a suitable rest period Mr Francis and his mate would go by car to catch up with the train and take it to Kalgoorlie.
“We received the authorisation to have a meal at what was then the Golden Fleece Service Station and then my mate said he would like to get a copy of the Sunday Times,” he said.
“We proceeded to walk down Andrew Street — by this time the news agent had closed so we were told to go up to the little shop which was known as Bob’s (Food Corner) in them days (now Aurelia’s Ice Creamery).
“We turned into the other street parallel to the beach, got about a hundred yards up the street, looked up and there the train went flying across the crossing that was there at the time.”
The road and rail approaches have since undergone major remodelling works, but fortunately at the time trains approaching the wharf had to cross a steep little hill, which acted as a brake.
“As far as I can recall there was probably about 12 tankers of fuel and it was estimated the train must have been doing close to 100k an hour by the time it came down that steep bank,” Mr Francis said.
“It went through Esperance yard, up the steep hill that was there at the time before this big cutting was made, and rolled down and derailed in the sand area in the Esperance wharf area.”
As far as he recalls, Mr Francis said there were about three tanks in the sand and one just teetering over the rock wall which was the breakwater, with a slight leak from the fuel discharge pipe.
There was no environmental disaster and mercifully, no one was hurt.
Mr Francis then had an anxious three month wait for the outcome of the inevitable inquiry.
“I thought: ‘that’s the end of my job’,” Mr Francis said.
“But the area manager said: ‘after the inquiry and because of so many things involved and people involved, your explanation is accepted and no further action will be taken’.”
Among other things, Mr Francis said the review recommended the application of handbrakes to all rolling stock when a train was disabled.
And the tanker train, which carried fuel to the Kambalda refinery, had regular inspections from then on.
