Hi John,
My brother narrowly missed getting on that train in the morning.
The 20th of January will also mark the 70th anniversary of the 1944 Brooklyn Level
Crossing disaster and a memorial service will be held up here at the little town
on the Hawkesbury River.
The level crossing was protected by gates that were manually operated by a
gatekeeper. The gatekeeper had no automated warning of a train's approach,
no accurate timetable and was provided with no clock or watch. He was
simply supposed to listen out for the whistle of a train and take action.
What happened was that one gate had been left open and the other just partly closed.
The driver of the local bus came up onto the crossing, saw the other gate was closed
and stopped.
The gradient of the line down into Brooklyn is very steep and the fast moving
Kempsey Mail collided with the bus, killing sixteen, including the driver of the
bus, and injuring four.
If you are familiar with that stretch of the line I believe it might have the steepest
gradient in the whole Sydney to Brisbane run.
It was therefore no surprise that by the time the train could pull up, it was
way down at the station a quarter of a mile from the crossing and apparently
onlookers on the platform were horrified to see the sight of bodies strewn
over the front of the train.
As a young boy, my father would normally come up to the Hawkesbury to
visit his aunt and uncle and would spend the day riding on the toolbox next
to the bus driver, who was his cousin.
For some reason my father was late and missed the ferry to take him north to south
across the river that morning and thus missed to go on his daily bus ride. If he
had caught the ferry and got in the bus, I probably wouldn't be here to write these
words.
Article in the Melbourne Argus from the time here -
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11804445
