Train speeded up before disaster

A passenger aboard the train which derailed south of Sydney today said the Tangara appeared to speed up before impact.
Nonee Walsh, a reporter, was travelling home in the last or second last carriage when the southbound train, with about 80 people aboard, derailed 4km south of Waterfall Station on the Illawarra line at about 7.30am (AEDT).
· Injured Reporter on the Scene of the Accident [Sydney Morning Herald]

Australia's worst railway accident was in 1977 in the Sydney suburb of Granville, in which 83 people died. My wife Lauren used to catch the same train every morning with her friend Erica Watson in order to get to the dancing classes at the Australian Academy of Ballet. Erica was one of the lucky survivors, the passenger right next to her died. Due to the horrific injuries she sustained she never danced again. Lauren was not sitting next to Erica that tragic morning because like her mother she occasionally suffered from painful migraines and remained in the darkness of her bedroom that fateful morning.
[Czechoslovaks remember January 1977 for Havel’s initiative the Charter 77]
· Chronological list of Rail Accidents [SMH]