At 10.30pm on Saturday evening, a deafening boom rang out along Kingston’s Mayes Avenue as a commuter train crashed into a car trapped on the railway tracks.
Minutes earlier, a car, which paramedics said was driven by a woman in her 40s, veered off the road, through a metal fence, and onto the railway track.
Sari Sheppard, who lives across the road from the site of the car crash, heard the events unfold and ran out to help the person in the car.
Another resident of Mayes Avenue, Andrew Oostenbroek, who also ran out to help, and spoke to Nine News on Sunday about what he saw, said the car was upside down on the track.
Two minutes after the initial car crash, Ms Sheppard said, a train came barreling down the track.
Ms Sheppard thought the woman, still stuck in the car, would not survive the train’s impact.
“We had to quickly get up to safety and we just watched helplessly as the train smashed into the car,” Mr Oostenbroek told Nine News.
“We saw the mangled wreck and just thought ‘she’s gone. ‘
“It was a horrible thing to witness.”
Police and paramedics arrived a short time later and stayed until just after 5am on Sunday.
Unbelievably, the woman survived the impact with minor injuries and visited the scene a day later with her children, according to Ms Sheppard.
Ms Sheppard said the train, usually empty late at night, was packed with people.
Paramedics said approximately 100 people, including train staff and passengers, were uninjured and evacuated from the train onto another train just after midnight, according to news reports.
Another train travelling nearby, which didn’t crash into the car, was also affected and evacuated by firefighters.
The Gold Coast and Beenleigh train lines were suspended, and buses replaced trains between Bannon and Beenleigh according to Queensland Rail.
Regular train services resumed on the morning of Sunday, 9 November, roughly seven hours after the crash.
