Harden Fire and Rescue were called to a locomotive fire, west of the Nubba Crossroads on Saturday, as a southbound train with 4 locomotives caught ablaze.
Captain Wal Leonow said “We were called around 9:30am to a train fire and when we got out there the boom gates were down and the train was past there luckily. We took the next access road and headed west up the line. An RFS unit was already on the scene.”
Crews from Coota and Wallendbeen along with 3 others were in attendance. The fire was extinguished with foam with the engine suffering extensive damage.
Wal said, “The train breaks come on and work like a truck’s breaks. When the air pressure drops the breaks came on.”
The driver attempted to put the fire out with an extinguisher but was unable to put it fully out. The line between Harden and Wallendbeen was closed for a number of hours.
Wal said, “It melted the doors and the side of the train, we didn’t leave the scene until we checked through thermal imaging for any further flare ups.”
The crew didn’t arrive back to Harden until 11:30am after the mop up process was completed.
Once the loco’s were restarted the train made it a further 5 kilometres down the track under the heavy Steele load before breaking down again.
XPT Services were disrupted due to the fire.
