REMEMBERING THE GRANVILLE TRAIN DISASTER

THE TRAUMA OF AUSTRALIA'S WORST RAILWAY TRAGEDY LIVES ON

John Burfitt

Meredith Knight refuses to call the Granville train disaster, in which 84 people were killed in Australia's worst railway tragedy, an "accident”.

The daughter of Bryan Knight, who died from injuries sustained on that fateful day, now offers a stark description of the event.

"It was a clear case of supreme negligence that, to this day, still defies belief," Meredith tells New Idea.

On January 18, 1977, a morning train travelling from the Blue Mountains to Sydney was passing through the suburb of Granville when it crashed.

New revelations into the catastrophe in the book, Revisiting the Granville Train Disaster of 1977– written by Barry J. Gobbe, the first ambulance officer on the scene - uncovered details of a defective lead wheel on the locomotive that caused the city-bound commuter train to derail at 8.10am.

Once the train jumped the tracks, it smashed into the pillars holding up the Bold Street road bridge, which then collapsed onto the train below.

The official inquiry determined that the poorly maintained fastening of the track on the bend was the primary cause of the crash. Gobbe's allegations have credibly challenged those findings – and the revelations have angered Meredith, the survivors and the families who lost loved ones that day.