Major safety flaws: Qld Rail trains seconds away from deadly collision

Two passenger trains just 30 minutes apart were seconds away from colliding with an excavator on a Brisbane train line, exposing major safety flaws with Queensland Rail, a damning investigation has found.

Footage of the near-miss incident involving a Queensland Rail passenger train which nearly collided with an excavator near Thorneside, on March 7, 2020.

Two passenger trains just 30 minutes apart were seconds away from colliding with an excavator on a Brisbane train line, exposing major safety flaws with Queensland Rail, a damning investigation has found.

A two-year Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation laid out the frightening spate of back-to-back near misses where an excavator operator was forced to “jump” away from an oncoming train and “cling onto a fence”.

The incidents, which could have been fatal and caused the derailment of one of the suburban passenger trains, happened on May 7, 2020.

A work group including the excavator operator had been replacing rail tracks as part of a planning closure on a section of track between Thorneside and Birkdale stations about 1am.

The rail corridor however was not due to close until 2.18am.

Images from a Queensland Rail near miss on March 7, 2020.

The excavator operator was directed to access the tracks with the first train travelling at more than 90km/h posing an “imminent” risk of collision, the investigation found.

The operator had to gouge its bucket into the ground to drag the excavator from the track about “one second” prior to it being cleaned up by the train passing about 61km/h.

“In this case, it was very likely that the emergency actions of the train driver and the excavator operator prevented an imminent collision,” the report read.

Just 30 minutes later however, the same excavator operator had to “jump down and embankment and cling onto a fence” as a second train passed by the incident site at about 60km/h.

“The excavator was only just clear of the track, I thought I was going to clip it,” the report stated.

The operator had been directed to remove the excavator from the “danger zone” without it being confirmed that all rail traffic had been stopped.

The bureau’s investigation said the near-collision had the potential for serious “adverse” consequences for the excavator operator and for the train to derail.

It found that Queensland’s network rules and procedures did not provide sufficient guidance for rail safety workers to “ensure they used standardised, rail-specific terminology when communicating safety-critical information”.

It also identified several issues with the work group’s “essential” pre-start briefing, with three of the workers including the excavator driver not involved in the meeting at all.

An excavator involved in a near miss with a Queensland Rail train.

“Queensland Rail also entered an enforceable voluntary undertaking with the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator, committing to 13 initiatives to improve planning processes for track access, and a range of other safety steps,” the report said.

Queensland Rail’s Head of South East Queensland Neil Backer said it acknowledged the report and noted that the safety issues identified had been addressed.

“Queensland Rail’s first priority is the safety of its employees, its network and the communities in which it operates and we are extremely grateful that no one was physically injured in these incidents,” Mr Backer said.

“We have implemented improved safety and training procedures to manage access to the rail corridor.”