The Way We Were
Sequisentenary of Gunnedah 1856 - 2006

The North West Mail disaster

The North West rail line was the scene of one of Australia’s worst disasters on September 13, 1926, when runaway rail trucks crashed into the North West Mail near Blandford, killing 26 people.

The tragic toll included three Gunnedah and district residents – Peter Vaginias, Clarice Sampson, a schoolgirl, of Wentworth Street, and six-year-old John Errol Walker, of Tambar Springs.

The disaster was the worst in the history of rail in NSW to that point, exceeded only in Australia by the Sunshine disaster in Victoria in April 1908, where 41 people were killed. Both were much later eclipsed by the Granville (Sydney) disaster, which claimed 83 lives in 1977.

When a goods train from Werris Creek was being drawn into the crossing loop at Murrulla, between Blandford and Scone, to allow the North West Mail from Moree to Sydney to pass, a drawhook on a truck attached to the goods train broke. Though efforts were made to secure the rear portion with improvised coupling, three trucks broke away, running back a mile and a half and smashing into the mail train as it made its way up the incline.

The guard on the goods train was standing beside the track as the trucks began to move back down the line. He tried desperately to clamber onto the runaway trucks but was unable to do so and they disappeared around the corner of the line at breakneck speed. Railwaymen attached to the goods train were aware that the North West Mail had left Blandford but were powerless to prevent the impending catastrophe. The trucks struck the Mail with incredible force, which telescoped them over several carriages. The red-hot coals of the wrecked engine ignited the wool with which the trucks were loaded.

The scene was one of chaos. The screams and groans of the injured, pinned beneath the wreckage, intermingled with the agonised cries of children, many of them returning to school in Sydney, were heart-rending. The passengers who had escaped injury worked with all their might to free those trapped but the rescue work was hampered by a lack of axes, saws and lifting equipment. The burning bales of wool added to the terrors of the passengers.

Sheets from the sleeping compartments and handkerchiefs were used as bandages and bindings and cushions were made into mattresses beside the line for the injured. Some of the wreckage was used for fires, in the weird light of which the rescue operations continued. One of the seriously injured passengers was jammed between two carriages with a dead man wedged on top of him. Rescuers were compelled to sever the dead man’s limbs to free the man below. The motor train from Murrurundi took the three undamaged carriages of the Mail back to Murrurundi, full of wounded, and an engine and carriage from Murrurundi later removed the dead.

Most of the dead had been travelling in the second carriage, which was reduced to matchwood as the runaway trucks telescoped over the passenger train.

Among the dead was the locomotive driver, John Giles, from Everleigh depot in Sydney. His wife was also killed. Other victims came from Moree, Rowena, Pilliga, Narrabri, Gunnedah, Tambar Springs, Werris Creek, Quirindi, Tamworth, Scone, Waratah, Merewether and Sydney, as well as a New Zealander, JR Mockridge, of Dunedin.