Talk:Railway accidents in Western Australia

unsigned comment

Could Blanchardb please explain the reason this page was renamed from Railways to Rail. It is one of a set of pages under the wikipedia tag Railways of Australia.

I would like to see the page moved back to its original naming.(unsigned)

assessment

A lot more linking and refs needed User:JarrahTree 22:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of rail accidents by country which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:01, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Roelands, 1951

There appears to be a problem with the following sentence:

... driver William Wakeham was crushed to death under a load of quarry stone when the trucks telescoped as the locomotive while running bunker first jumped the rails on a curve and struck the side of a cutting. See Railway accidents in Western Australia#Roelands, 1951.

The problem surrounds the words “while running bunker”. Dolphin (t) 05:57, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I have been assured by a source the problem is the phrase you query: the term usually applies to tank engines running in reverse (Western Australia usage), but maybe the term is utilised by an eastern states writer referring to tender locomotives as in the same sense (the locomotive former WAGR G 125). It was running tender first at the time of the derailment. So you could replace the word bunker with tender, if you so choose. JarrahTree 01:38, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt reply. Your explanation makes perfect sense to me, even though I’m not a railway person. I think I will change “bunker first” to “tender-first”. A hyphen will help show that the sentence isn’t making use of expressions “running tender” or “first jumped”. Dolphin (t) 06:01, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

The running rules were very specific that some classes of locomotive in the steam era were not allowed to run tender first under any circumstances, and turntables and triangles were created in the system to make sure the rule was adhered to and accommodated. JarrahTree 07:38, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

I’m familiar with turntables. It is extraordinary that they were turned manually even though they were carrying a steam locomotive! Dolphin (t) 07:52, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

The cost was prohibitive considering the loads on some lines, so triangles were cheaper, which were as effective in turning the locos. The balancing of the turntable was (and is in surviving ones, which are very few these days) that was amazing to watch. JarrahTree 08:01, 24 May 2024 (UTC)