"Broken Journeys Volume 2"
By Kenn Pearce
Paperback cover 52 pages black/white photos
INTRODUCTION
One day while I was thumbing through some pictures for possible inclusion in the second volume of Broken Journeys, a colleague came up and queried what I was doing.
"Oh, I'm sorting out some train smash pictures I hope to use in a book shortly," I said.
"That seems a fairly gory subject.," came the reply.
I suppose he had a point. Death, damage and destruction often makes for unpleasant viewing or reading but that has never stopped the media reporting and analysing disasters of the past or, for that matter, lessened the public's interest in learning all the details of what has happened. If any evidence is needed that we all occasionally take a gruesome interest in the misfortunes of other, you need only count the number of people who stand around watching clean-up operations following the collision of two cars, or the crowds that congregate when fire engines arrive to fight a major blaze.
And so it is with train accidents. From the late 19th century - when Australian photography was still in its infancy - right up to the latest newspaper edition, train crashes attract public attention.
Mercifully, Australia has had relatively few major tragedies on its railways since they began in the 1850s. Many, such as the Sunshine Disaster of 1908 (covered in Broken Journeys, Vol. 1) were symptomatic of the mistakes that were made due to blatantly unsafe practices. Nevertheless the Granville disaster of 1977 - which shockingly surpassed the Sunshine tragedy in terms of fatalities - is clear evidence that we must never become complacent about safety on our railways.
Kenn Pearce, November 1988