Superstition saved Keith McGowan from Granville rail disaster

MELBOURNE radio veteran Keith McGowan walked away from the Granville rail disaster to make one of the most powerful pieces of live radio ever broadcast in Australia. How did he survive?

The crash that killed 83 people and injured 213 others.

A STRANGE superstition saved broadcaster Keith McGowan’s life the morning he climbed aboard a commuter train for the run to work on January 18, 1977.

It was his habit to ride in the last two carriages of a train.

When the 6.09am train from Mount Victoria derailed at Granville on its way to Sydney 40 years ago, he survived unhurt and broadcast details of the crash that killed 83 people and injured 213 others.

Melbourne-born McGowan was a couple of months short of his 34th birthday and was an afternoon announcer at Sydney radio station 2UW.

He was on his way to work when disaster struck around 8.10am.

A wheel on the locomotive hauling the packed commuter train left the tracks, flipping it on to its side and sending it barrelling into the central supports of the Bold Street bridge, above the tracks.

The train came to rest with the first two carriages clear of the bridge, but the first carriage hit a

stanchion at the side of the tracks and ripped it open, killing eight people inside.

Carriages three and four bore the brunt of the concrete and steel raining down as the bridge collapsed.

Dozens were crushed where they sat.

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In 1998, when the Network 10 miniseries The Day of the Roses aired for the first time, McGowan told the Herald Sun about his part in the disaster.

“I always sat in the last carriage because, for a reason I cannot explain, I’ve had an image of a train crash and the last two carriages being still on the tracks, but the rest of the train wrecked,” he said.

But that morning, he opted for the second last carriage instead. The last carriage was for smokers and he was riding with a friend, Marcia Marcini, and she detested the smell of the smoke.

One of the mangled carriages.

It took 31 hours for the final victim to be removed from the crushed carriages.

“We went through Parramatta and came through the swing into the Granville area and the train gently stopped. Three distinct, soft stops.”

McGowan peered from the carriage and saw the overpass had fallen.

“I jumped off the train and I remember looking down and seeing the wheels were off the track,” he said.

He scrambled across multiple sets of tracks, up an embankment and through a corrugated iron fence to a nearby employment office to phone his wife and tell her what had happened, and that he was OK.

Only then did he realise the extent of the disaster.

“I crossed the road and went to (the front of the train) and looked down there and couldn’t believe what I saw. The locomotive on its side, the carriages split open, people everywhere,” he said.

“Then I walked back to the employment office and rang John Laws (who was on air on 2UW at the time).”

That the accident happened deep in a cutting made access difficult for emergency services workers.

McGowan’s tearful call to Laws, describing the devastation, is one of the most emotive and powerful pieces of live radio ever broadcast in Australia.

His shock and fear in his voice was palpable as he spoke to Laws.

“I thought it was just the carriage under the bridge at first, but then I had a look on the other side of the bridge,” he sobbed down the phone line to Laws and the 2UW audience that morning.

“The locomotive’s on its side and one carriage, all you can see is the floor of it. It’s on its side. It’s had the top ripped off it and others have jackknifed into it.”

That segment of his broadcast featured in the opening credits of Day of the Roses.

Forty years on, Granville remains Australia’s deadliest rail disaster.

Of the 83 people that died, many were killed instantly as the weight of the bridge — estimated at 470 tonnes — and the cars that were on it, fell on to the train.

The impact brought down the bridge and overhead powerlines.

The 213 injured included 83 people who were seriously hurt.

Miraculously, rail personnel aboard the locomotive survived the impact, which brought down the bridge and overhead powerlines and caused natural gas to spew from broken pipes.

The accident happened deep in a cutting, making access difficult for emergency services workers who began arriving within minutes.

Once they got there, the unstable rubble that had flattened the carriages posed a huge risk to the medical teams and rescue workers clamouring through the wreckage to get to survivors.

Keith McGowan in 2011.

It took 31 hours for the final victim to be removed from the crushed carriages.

A coronial inquest found the track at the scene was poorly maintained and spread the rails apart as the heavy locomotive rolled across it, causing the derailment.

The Bold Street bridge was rebuilt as a single span, with no need for supports in the middle.

Each year, survivors, loved ones of the dead and members of the rescue team return to the Bold Street Bridge and drop red roses on to the tracks as part of a memorial service.

Keith McGowan started out as an office boy at 3UZ in Melbourne in 1957, aged 14, launching a 54-year radio career that took him to Gippsland (where he was an announcer at 3TR and a TV presenter at GLV-10), Tasmania, Western Australia, back to Victoria and up to regional NSW and Sydney.

Following his stint at 2UW, McGowan moved back to Melbourne, where he had stints at 3MP, 3DB and 3AK before hosting 3AW’s Overnighters program from 1990 until his retirement in July 2011.

McGowan died from a stroke shortly before Christmas in 2013.

@JDwritesalot