Lookout Wasn't Watching

Newcastle Herald

Thursday December 4, 2008

By PAUL MAGUIRE

TWO maintenance workers killed by an empty coal train near Singleton last year failed to keep adequate lookout, an investigator with the Office of Transport Safety Investigation, Ron Barnes, told a coronial inquest yesterday.

Under cross-examination, Mr Barnes agreed with the suggestion that Geoffrey Johnson, 49, of Greta, and John Turner, 48, of Tamworth, may not have realised that the fatal train was so close.

Mr Johnson and Mr Turner were called out early on July 16 to fix equipment known as points, which allow trains to move from one set of tracks to another.

The men died just before 6am when they were hit, 500 metres south of Singleton Railway Station, by a train heading to the Upper Hunter pits.

At the same time they were passed by a fully laden coal train heading to the Port of Newcastle.

Mr Barnes said the pair knew trains were approaching on both the westbound and eastbound lines.

During a telephone conversation just before being hit, Mr Johnson twice told rail network controller Marcus Rose at Broadmeadow to let the trains use the lines as he and Mr Turner would watch for them, Mr Barnes said.

Explaining that final conversation, Mr Barnes said Mr Johnson was told the empty train was about seven to 11 kilometres from Singleton.

A driver in the empty train said his locomotive was almost on top of the men by the time he saw them. Both had their backs turned.

The officer in charge of investigating the deaths, Detective Sergeant Michael Prentice, tendered documents that showed no job risk assessment papers were found at the scene, the rail network's information data recorded different times for several things, both trains had their headlights turned off as they approached the scene and Mr Turner's body was found to have a blood alcohol level ranging from .042 to .089.

The documents recommended:

? Guidelines be altered so train drivers dimmed, rather than turned off, their headlights as trains passed.

? "No authority required" procedures for trackworkers be changed.

? Network controllers notify train drivers of track workers.

? Visibility of track workers be improved.

Coroner Stephen Jackson adjourned the matter to January 29.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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