A male youth was spotted riding a brake wagon through Ingham over the weekend in yet another near hit involving a cane train.
The youth was still on the brake wagon when the cane train came to a stop just outside town but ran off before crew members could engage him.
In a separate incident, a cane train narrowly avoided a collision with a stolen car left abandoned on a rail line. Three cane bins were derailed after the loco driver applied emergency braking to avoid hitting the vehicle.
Herbert Cane Supply manager Jim Kirchner said the incidents occurred about 24 hours apart and appeared to be part of a concerning trend.
“We have now recorded three collisions and six serious near hits involving cane trains in the Herbert this season and we are only about one-third of the way through the crush,” Mr Kirchner said.
“The real concern is that it’s only a matter of time before one of these incidents goes horribly wrong,” he said.
Mr Kirchner said the incident involving the brake wagon happened about midnight Friday while the second incident occurred at Warrens Hill Road near midnight on Saturday.
He said both events caused considerable delays to bin deliveries in and out of Victoria Mill.
“Police were called and six cane trains were halted after we became aware of the young person riding the brake wagon. It took about two hours to get the all clear for our trains to get moving again.
“Following the second incident, it took about two hours to clear the derailed bins and spilt cane from the line.”
On August 22, two people were forced to cling to a pylon to avoid being hit by a cane train passing over the Macknade cane railway bridge.
Closed circuit camera footage of the incident was passed to police. Mr Kirchner said the Herbert region had recorded more third party cane train incidents this year than any of Wilmar Sugar’s other milling regions.
He urged members of the public to contact police if they witnessed any concerning activities around cane trains or train lines.
Can’t detect anything else, Herbert penomena, Burdekin no hits, but a few near hits, proserpine, 4 hits no collisions, planbe creek car hit a locomotive arly in the season.
Near hits out ther ththen officially make the recordings, form our angle the number of collisions occured is a very worrying trend, very concerned, while injuries have been sustained, worry of someone dying or getting seriously hurt.
Ran into a locomotive on an active crossing on Bruce Highway, driver didn’t hit brteaks,m hit locomotive at highway speed. driver had whiplash injury, lucky, if locomotive had been further on, loco could have been off the line and down a ditch.
In addition to that risk, also psycho risk to loco drivers, take a long time to stop a fully laden train, but nothing much they can do, essentially quite slow moving, at levels crossing max speed 20km/h, monitored at all mills.
Always more we can do, we’ve done tv and radio campaigns, billboards which are refreshed each year, Cowboys community corner at game we handed out canegrowers safety material, school awareness campains, other service providers lifesavers, fire dept ergon also promote.
Working with council to ensure visibility at crossings in regards to height of cane being, cut back cane as early as possible in season.
Quite a bit of inattention among drivers, complacency and can’t rule out recklessness. One issue we’re continually confronted with is that we have 60-70 train movements per day in the corridor, go straight through guts of town which is a challenge, come in contact with pedestrians as well as traffic.
Most town sbuilt around mills, Burdekin better situated then most, other three.
High traffic area put cameras on active crossings, so we can interrogate footage and pass on to police, to try and encourage compliance.
Pay attention, and obey the rules.
Police are quite active in their campaign, face fine and loss of points if prosecuted for ignoring flashing lights and operating with undue care.
When and where was the last incident that resulted in serious injury or death?
Who is in charge of making sure stop lights etc are working correctly?
What do you think can be done to improve the situation? Is the signage and general awareness lacking in some way?