1999, December 2, Glenbrook rail emergency

The Glenbrook rail accident occurred on 2nd December 1999 at 8:22 am. Seven passengers in the front compartment of the first carriage of the inter urban train were killed and 51 passengers were transported to hospital with injuries. Many other passengers sustained injuries which did not require their immediate hospitalisation but which have caused significant physical or mental impairment to them. On the same day I was flown by helicopter to the scene of the accident where I viewed the two trains in the collision position.

The Glenbrook rail accident was the most serious rail accident in New South Wales since 6 May 1990 when an inter urban train collided with a special steam train on the Cowan embankment near the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney in which six persons were killed and 100 passengers injured. The most serious rail accident prior to that occurred on 18 January 1977 at Granville when an eight car passenger train derailed and collided with the Bold Street bridge, causing the bridge to fall on the third and fourth carriages of that train resulting in the deaths of 83 passengers with injuries to a further 213 passengers.