Railways and Tramways of Australia

Mail train crash

 

The Rockhampton Mail crashed near Traveston in Queensland on 9 June 1925.

 

Traveston is located near Gympie on the North Coast Line. The station was 93 miles (150 km) north of Brisbane.

 

Two PB15 Class 4-6-0 engines, nos 683 and 388, were hauling the Rockhampton Mail at the time of the accident. It consisted of a goods wagon, postal van, four sleeping carriages, five sitting carriages, luggage van and a mail brake van. Thus, two locomotives and 13 carriages.

 

At 1.50 am the train passed through Traveston station, and shortly afterwards a passenger in a sitting car noticed that it started bumping. He looked outside and saw sparks and flames coming from the wheels of the luggage van. The train was clearly off the rails.

 

The front part of the train passed over a timber trestle bridge, but a sitting car and the luggage van plunged off the bridge; they were both completely smashed. Another passenger car was pulled onto its side, while the brake van was derailed but remained upright on the bridge. The goods wagon landed in the creek bed.

 

Ten passengers died and over 50 were injured.

 

Passengers from the front portion of the train went to assist the injured. Doctors and ambulance personnel travelled to the scene on a special train from Gympie. The front part of the derailed train later proceeded to Gympie, taking the injured and the remaining passengers.

 

An inquiry found the derailment was likely caused by a piece from a broken brakeshoe falling onto the rail in front of the wheels of the luggage van. It recommended existing wooden luggage vans no longer be used on mail trains. Consequently, baggage vans with steel frames were constructed.

 

The Traveston mail train crash was Queensland’s worst railway accident at the time.

 

Bibliography

J Armstrong, ‘The Traveston smash’, Australian Railway Historical Society Bulletin, no. 386, December 1969, pp 282–6.

‘Frightful railway accident’, State Library of Queensland blog, 9 June 2015, www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/frightful-railway-accident, accessed 6 June 2026.

JW Knowles, ‘Lessons (or otherwise) from the Traveston accident’, Australian Railway Historical Society Bulletin, no. 415, May 1972, pp 119–20.

K Pearce, Australian railway disasters, 2nd edn, IPL Books, Sydney, 1999.

‘Sad catastrophe: coaches in splinters’, The Brisbane Courier, 10 June 1925, p 7.