There have been 2 terrible accidents at this crossing. The first on June 19th 1919. Roy Ayling and Eugenie Armstrong were in a sidecar motorbike when it was struck by a train.
The second on April 12th 1970 killing 17 people. A double decker bus plowed into the side of a Bluebird train
Read on to find out more....
June 19th, 1919 was just another ordinary day for engine driver and fireman, John James O’Shea and Harold Sutherland. They went to work at the Islington Train Yards. They fired up Engine 88 to pull Goods Train 72 and set off on route from Mile End out to Hamley Bridge, north of Gawler.
As the train approached the crossing on what is now Redbanks Road between Roseworthy and Gawler, the engine driver sounded his whistle. As the whistle was sounded, he noticed a motorcycle with sidecar speeding along the road. The train whistle was sounded again as a warning. The motorcycle appeared to slow down, then suddenly as if racing the train to the crossing, sped up.
O’Shea sounded the train's whistle again and Sutherland applied the tender brake.
Due to the incline of the rail line, the airbrakes and tender brakes had already been partially applied, so when the train approached the crossing it was already decelerating.
The train entered the crossing at 20 miles per hour pulling a 300-ton load. It struck the centre of the motorcycle, dragging it under the cowcatcher and under the train.
Fireman, Harold Sutherland stated of the incident; “I saw the motorcycle, about a chain away, on the driver's side of the engine. Saw nothing further until the bodies flew out from the under wheels of the engine onto the right side of the line.”
Roy Ayling was a quiet young man described as quiet and thoughtful, with a gift for motor mechanics. The 20-year-old was well known and liked around Willaston. He was a successful poultry breeder who made his own incubators and breeders. He had been riding a motorcycle for over a year, and many local people knew the sound of his bike as it came and went from Willaston.
Eugenie Armstrong was a student at the Gawler Technical School. At only 18 and half she had made her mark assisting at various businesses in Gawler’s main street. She was a valued member of the Gawler’s Congregational Church. Her father, Mr A.P, Armstrong was a well-known Labor Party Member in South Australia. Miss Armstrong was described by friends as; “A sterling and reliable companion, who was very popular among her peers......"
The collision between a Bluebird train and a double-decker bus north of Adelaide on April 12, 1970 killed 17 people and injured more than 40 others.
Those who died were on the bus and were aged between nine and 74.
The bus was carrying families from the Adelaide Gothic Hotel social club who were returning from a picnic at Wasleys, while the train was heading north, bound for Gladstone.
Kingsley Folland, who was a St John Ambulance first aider at the time, said he learnt of the crash after a carload of injured people stopped outside his house, looking for directions to the Gawler hospital.
After leading them to the hospital, he was waiting outside when he saw one of the bus passengers talking to the train driver who had been sitting alone.
Mr Folland said that after the man identified himself as the train driver, his "voice started to break up, his head folded down into his lap and he started crying."
"I can still see it this many years later, how he turned and looked up … and he said 'who the bloody hell do you think I am? I'm only the train driver,'" Mr Folland said.
Mr Folland then went to the crash site to help.
"The train was up the track quite a bit, there was a lot of people spread in different places, there was no floodlights like they have at incident scenes now," he said.
Eric Teivans, who was 17 when he attended the crash as a volunteer ambulance officer and said he remembered walking through the scene and seeing something sticking out of the ground.
"I didn't know what it was … I found out the next day it was actually an axle off the bus," he said.
"We were the third ambulance out of 18 that were despatched.
"I was physically affected for at least two days after the event. I was nauseous.It became known as the Wasleys crash but in fact occurred at Gawler Belt at a place nicknamed the 27 Mile Crossing.
The provision of ambulance services at Gawler was overhauled in the wake of the incident, which also flagged the need for counselling support for emergency workers.