Report finds mistake occured before train rolled away in remote north of Western Australia and travelled 268km before being remotely derailed

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Maintenance workers accidentally applied brakes to the wrong locomotive last year before a BHP train laden with iron ore travelled for 91 kilometres without a driver in Western Australia and had to be deliberately derailed.

The company was forced to derail the runaway train about 120km out of Port Hedland on 5 November, with some estimating it would cost the company $55m a day until the track was repaired.

Two locomotives, 245 ore cars and 2km of track at Turner South were destroyed in the crash.

A preliminary report released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau on Tuesday revealed the drama began with a communication problem between the front of the train and a monitor at the end as the train travelled from Newman to Port Hedland, in the remote north of the state. This triggered an automated emergency brake and caused the train to stop as it reached Garden South.

Mangled wreckage of BHP runaway train revealed in video footage Read more

The driver had raised the alarm with the control centre and then applied an independent brake.

He got off the train at 3.53am and started applying handbrakes to the ore cars from the front of the train.

The report revealed a rail maintenance crew was called to help the driver apply the handbrakes, working from the back of the 2km long train, but they mistakenly applied them to a stationary, empty ore train, which was parked adjacent to the fully laden train.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An aerial image of the train wreckage and track damage at Turner South. Photograph: BHP, annotated ATSB

The braking system that initially stopped the fully-laden train automatically released after an hour, while the driver was still outside.

At about 4.40am, the driver heard air venting from the ore car brakes, and shortly after noticed the train was moving.

The driver tried to radio call the maintenance crew to tell them the brakes had “bled off” but there was no response, the report said.

About 20 minutes later, the driver of the empty ore train contacted controllers advising that the maintenance crew had mistakenly applied handbrakes to his train.

The driver, Peter Frick, was sacked but has since reached a settlement with the company after taking his case to the Fair Work Commission.

An internal investigation by BHP found the incident was the result of “procedural non-compliance by the operator” and “integration issues with the electronically controlled pneumatic braking system”.

“Even if the track support team had have attended the correct train and applied manual brakes, it would not have been enough to stop the roll-away event,” a BHP spokeswoman said in a statement.

BHP’s WA iron ore asset president, Edgar Basto, said the driver had not applied the automatic brake handle to the emergency position before leaving the cab, as required in the operating procedure and in accordance with training provided.

“If the automatic brake handle was in the emergency position as per the operating procedure, the train would not have rolled away,” he said.

Basto said the company had since brought in changes to its procedures to ensure the incident wasn’t repeated.

The report said the runaway train reached a speed of 162km per hour before slowing down to about 128km. It made seven technical recommendations, including amending operating instructions for brake pipe emergencies.

The transport bureau’s investigation is continuing to consider the design of BHP’s train braking systems and the procedures in the safety management system.

With additional reporting Australian Associated Press.

• This article was amended on 13 March 2019. The $55m a day cost to BHP was an estimate suggested by someone who works in the mining industry, not than a definite figure as an earlier version implied. This has been corrected.