Thursday, August 7, 2025

A shocking train crash

It was a long time ago when I posted about the local Sunshine train crash back in 1908. I was reminded of it when I recently came across this memorial plaque at Sunshine Station.


You can read about the detail on Wikipedia, and here is a snip. 

The Sunshine rail disaster occurred on 20 April 1908 at the junction at Sunshine railway station (in SunshineVictoriaAustralia) when a Melbourne-bound train from Bendigo collided with the rear of a train from Ballarat. 44 people were killed and over 400 injured, almost all of them from the Ballarat train, as the Bendigo train was cushioned by its two locomotives.[2]

It is the second worst train disaster in Australia after the much later 1977 Granville train crash with 83 killed. Nowadays, train crashes are so rare here, and deaths even rarer. 

Removed, it didn't work.

I worked on this for a long time, simply to find the audio, upload it and somehow place it here. Hence no post yesterday. I think it will work but truly, you are better to go to the website and just click play, and the lyrics are there too. 

16 comments:

  1. I read the transcript. A terrible accident. And there are still horrible incidents involving the modern, faster trains even now.
    I am tempted to cancel my next rail tickets now Andrew.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't cancel. The trains are run by Italians. You will be perfectly safe.

      Delete
  2. That would be a horrible event to recall

    ReplyDelete
  3. I cannot imagine being on a train as it crashes.

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  4. Terrible event, but I did like the song.

    ReplyDelete
  5. JayCee
    I said the same thing about planes :(

    ReplyDelete
  6. There was a train crash here in Quebec a few to several years ago. It is a devastating event.

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  7. The memorial plaque is a powerful reminder of those lives lost

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  8. Oh dear, I didn't know about the disaster in 1908 and of course remember the latter one well, dreadful both of them.
    Thanks for the link.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I didn't know about this one and while tragic, it was so long ago, it holds little interest for me.

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  10. I knew someone who was involved in a train crash. She wasn't hurt but never travelled by train again, which was a shame as her husband's work had provided her with free train travel.

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  11. I hadn't heard of that event. Sunshine is such a happy name for a terrible incident. (Named after a town, I assume.)

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  12. This was our worst train disaster.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster#:~:text=Forty%2Dseven%20people%20were%20killed,0.6%2Dmile)%20blast%20radius.

    It's strange because I just listened to a book show about a train disaster in Paris in 1895. I just looked it up and thankfully only one person was killed.

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    Replies
    1. The Canadian crash is quite well known, and it was a shocker. I will have to check on the Paris crash. It doesn't come to mind.

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  13. That train wreck is all the more shocking when you realize that it wasn't even a train carrying passengers!

    I guess plane crashes have replaced train crashes, at least as far as shock value.

    ReplyDelete

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