The Granville Train Disaster horrified the nation 46 years ago, but for the people who lost loved ones in Australia’s deadliest train disaster, the pain still remains.
On January 18, 1977, a crowded commuter train derailed when approaching Granville train station at the Bold Street Bridge, causing the bridge to collapse onto carriages three and four of the train. More than 200 people were injured and 84 lives were lost.
It’s a day that Meredith Knight will never forget.
“I was at home waiting to go to school and a news report came on the television that a bridge had fallen on a train at Granville,” she said.
“I was 15 at the time and when I saw that on the news I just had a feeling that Dad was on that train.”
That feeling would later prove true. Knight’s father Bryan was commuting from Leura to Sydney for work when the train derailed while going through the suburb of Granville. Sitting in carriage three, he was still alive when he was found by rescuers, but the head injuries he sustained would later prove fatal.
“The bricks came through the carriage roof and onto my father’s head, causing brain damage,” she said.
“There was a decision made to turn off his life machine because there was no brain activity.”
He was only 46-years-old at the time of his death.
Describing her father as very generous to his family, Knight was able to visit him in hospital before his passing. But it’s not this final moment with her Dad that she wants to remember, it’s all the moments that led up to it.
“I used to go to the public phone down the street and ring him up with reverse charges and he would help me with my maths homework,” she said.
“It’s those kinds of memories that I want to remember rather than seeing him in hospital on a life support machine.”
After the disaster, Knight had to leave school and get a job to help her Mum pay rent.
“One of the great travesties of all of that was even though [the disaster] was due to Government negligence… we didn’t get any compensation. Nothing,” she said.
Although investigators said poor fastening of the track caused the disaster, allegations from the first ambulance officer on the scene, Barry J Gobbe, have since challenged those findings to blame a defective lead wheel.
In 2017, the victims finally received a formal apology from the NSW Government. An active member of the Granville Train Disaster Association, it was Knight who played a key role in securing the apology.
On January 18, an annual memorial service will be held at Granville to honour the people who lost their lives on that fateful day. Red roses, representing each of the lives that were lost, will be thrown onto the tracks to pay tribute.
“I feel like this must be something that is not forgotten – history can repeat itself,” Knight said.
“It’s important to remember the lives that were so needlessly wasted. It should never have happened.”
Ellie Busby is a news reporter for Western Sydney Publishing Group. A graduate of the University of Hertfordshire and Western Sydney University, she is a journalism Major. Ellie has worked with Universal Media, The Cova Project and for a range of other organisations. In 2024, Ellie was named Young Writer of the Year at the Mumbrella Publish Awards.