Elsburg disaster

[Luca Lategan]

Hello, don't know if this is the right place, I just normally reply to messages, but I see no-one has covered the disaster that happened at Elsburg yesterday (10/9/9). The train was on its way from Richards bay to City Deep. I'm not so sure about this part, but apparently the driver left the train at Germiston Lake (I think it might have been Kutalo). What I do know is that the driver left the train wherever and left with the unit. Sufficient precautions wasn't taken and the train started to move... Well, seeing as it's all downhill it just went faster and faster until it also didn't stop for the signal at Elsburg and it went over the points. Well the wagons just piled and piled and the catenary was tore up and there was just Jameson and Chemicals every where. Most of the containers was just tore open and twisted and turned like it was made out of paper. The Jameson caught fire and they struggled to stop the blaze until late this morning. Cleanup work could only start after. People started to salvage alcohol immediately after incident, but police etc was on the site about 10 mins after

Was there at about 15h30 this afternoon. A crane was used to lift containers out of the cutting, an earth-moving machine and a big fork lift was used to pull out the mess and wagons. A man was busy cutting up the containers with an acetylene torch and a grab loaded it into a truck for scrap. About 20 workers was standing in a line transferring whole bottles of Jameson to a bakkie, someone is going to have a lekker party this weekend... Both railway lines are totally scrap, the catenary is still messed up 800m up the line, road occupied by emergency services.

Positive side? No one was injured and no damage to any loco...

Prize for most spectacular incident of the year?

[Morne Bothma]

Yeah definetly spectacular, absolute carnage!! Thanks for the update and pics, was not on the news as far as I know. Im sure this mess is gonna cause some serious delays on that line!