Two people died and several are injured after a train going from Sydney to Melbourne derailed in Victoria, Australia on Thursday.
The passenger train came off the tracks around 7:45 pm near the town of Wallan, about thirty miles from Melbourne’s Central Business District.
Twelve people were taken to the hospital, and one of them had to be flown off the scene.
One of the two people who have died is the driver, and the other is yet to be identified.
According to operator NSW TrainLink South, there were about 160 people on board by the time of the accident.
Four carriages came off the rail and a section of the track shows sign of significant damages.
Country Fire Authority Representative Keith Pakenham described the scene as chaotic, but confirms, “most of the passengers are only suffering from minor injuries.”
Teams were sent to help evacuate people from the carriages, and it is believed that all passengers are accounted for.
Ambulance Victoria confirms that “a large number of people are being assessed but are not believed to be seriously injured.”
One passenger said in an interview that the derailment lasted for about a minute from the moment it went off the track until the train stopped moving.
As soon as the train stopped, the some of the passengers tried to free the driver, and others tried to smash the windows of their carriages, but both attempts were in vain.
Passengers who can walk from the train were taken to the Wallan McDonald’s and the BP Truckstore area where a triage center had been setup.
The incident caused a major service disruption as several trains scheduled to enter and depart Melbourne was cancelled.
Days before the incident, V/Line Seynore Line, another operator that utilizes the same stretch of railway posted several announcements on Twitter about delays due to a rail equipment fault at Wallan.