Rescue workers astounded
2005-10-28 09:27
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Ziegfried Ekron
De Aar - Stunned rescue workers could only shake their heads in disbelief at the fact that nobody was killed in the collision between the Blue Train and the Shosholoza Meyl on Wednesday night at Deelfontein station near De Aar.
The Shosholoza (the Trans Karoo), according to rescue workers, collided head-on with the Blue Train at a speed of between 50 and 70km/h when the two trains met on the same line, apparently because of a wrong or malfunctioning signal.
The Blue Train was waiting at Deelfontein between De Aar and Beaufort West for the Shozoloza to pass when the accident occurred.
The impact of the collision pushed the Blue Train's locomotive underneath the coach immediately behind it.
According to railway technicians the driver of the Shosholoza, Louis Kriel, saw at the last moment that the points had thrown his train onto the same track as the stationary Blue Train.
Driver trapped
He instinctively hit the emergency brake.
He and his assistant then ran towards the back of the locomotive down the corridor to get away from the point of impact.
In the cab of the Blue Train the assistant driver also saw that a collision was inevitable and jumped from the locomotive before impact, one official said.
He did not want to be named.
But the driver, Piet van der Westhuizen, wasn't so lucky and was trapped in the mangled remains of the locomotive's cabin.
He broke his pelvis and rescue workers later had to remove him from the cabin through a gap.
Police rushed to scene
Sophia Jonkers, who lives in the ruin that was the former Deelfontein Station building, said she heard a loud bang before her dog started barking.
"At first I didn't want to see what was going on but then I saw all the people milling around."
On Wednesday morning Jonkers sat on her porch doing some sewing, while a horde of railway workers and rescue personnel milled around the two trains.
Police officers from Victoria West, Richmond and De Aar rushed to the scene of the accident on Wednesday night to treat the injured and pacify panicked passengers.
The Air Force was called in to help and the most seriously injured passengers were evacuated to hospitals at De Aar, Kimberley, Bloemfontein and Cape Town.
Those with minor injuries and the uninjured had to wait until after daybreak at the accident scene before being transported away in buses.
Spoornet technicians were at the scene quickly but had to wait for most of Thursday while one helicopter after the other brought inspection teams in from Johannesburg.
Slow process
Investigators combed through the wreckage to establish the damage and hunt for clues on how the two trains could have landed on the same track.
There was no official damage estimate although some technicians at the scene were talking about a figure in the vicinity of R60m.
The same Blue Train ensemble was recently refurbished at a cost of millions after it was damaged by fire last year. At least ten of the Blue Train coaches were damaged in the accident.
By late afternoon technicians started pushing the railway lines into position with a special type of bulldozer to enable them to start removing the coaches of the two trains.
It was hoped that at least one of the two lines would be opened to traffic by Thursday night.
The slow process of removing the seriously damaged sections of the trains should begin on Friday morning.
- Die Burger