Sixteen people were injured after a suburban train crashed in north-west Sydney on Monday morning, local officials have said.
The train failed to brake and hit an end of the line barrier while still ‘at speed’ at Richmond Station, some 60 kilometres from the city centre, Sydney Trains said on Monday.
Witnesses said passengers and crew were ‘sent flying’ when the train crashed.
Fifteen people were taken to various hospitals in the area for treatment, including a 21-year-old man with a suspected broken leg, the state's ambulance service confirmed.
The injured included the driver and a staff member on the train.
‘These people are very lucky,’ Paul Turner of Ambulance New South Wales said. ‘It was chaos. Things could've been much much worse.’ Photos shared on social media showed blood on doorsteps and stairways in the train and injured people lying on the platform.
‘(It) crashed at full speed into the barrier sending everyone flying like superman! It was insane!’ Brett Saunders, who was on a platform at the station, wrote on his Facebook post.
Witnesses described the scene as ‘chaotic.’ The train came in at speed and hit the buffer and rebounded with an ‘almighty bang,’ one eyewitness told local radio station 2GB.
‘There was a huge amount of dust,’ he said. ‘It's all chaos here.’ Authorities have begun an investigation, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.
‘This is really concerning, fortunately, it's not something that happens every day and I don't for a second want to underscore how serious this incident is,’ she told reporters.
Howard Collins, the head of Sydney Trains, said it was too early to speculate on the cause. But the buffer worked ‘effectively’ and stopped the train from derailing, he told reporters in Sydney.
‘It is obviously very concerning,’ he said.
The crash comes as Sydney transport bosses meet with union representatives over pay and working conditions for the city's train workers. The meeting was reportedly delayed due to the incident.
More than 9,000 Sydney train workers have vowed to go on a strike next Monday, a move which threatens to bring public transport in Australia's largest city to a standstill.
