Introducing Grant: one of the faces of our level crossing safety campaign

With the start of National Rail Safety Week on Sunday (11 August), we introduce one of the faces behind our level crossing safety campaign,  Respect the Sign, Lives are on the Line. Train driver Grant, based in Gladstone recounts a shocking near miss in Central Queensland and why he’s urging greater community awareness for level crossing safety.

Connection to the land

Grant Hewett is a country boy at heart. Born in Winton in outback Queensland and with a lifelong connection to the land, he now runs cattle on a “couple of hundred acres” outside Gladstone.

He likes the wide-open spaces of his workplace, the resource rich Bowen Basin in Queensland, and the responsibility that comes with driving a 10,000 tonne+ coal train carrying export product worth millions of dollars.

“I enjoy looking after a massive piece of machinery, so you've got to be switched on at all times. There's always different things that you're looking at all day long, assessing things and making decisions on the move at all times “ he said.

A cautious approach to level crossings

With more than 25 years with Aurizon - and most of them in the driver’s seat - he’s seen his fair share of incidents at level crossings.

“I'm very aware when I come up to level crossings, I'm very conscious of what's around me and what's happening, the years have taught me that,” he says.

“Vehicle drivers don't understand about trains with the stopping distance. You know at 1900 metres long it takes a fair time to stop once we go to emergency … and we're pretty much helpless. Once we go to emergency we basically sit on our hands and wait to stop because we can't swerve, we can't take evasive action.”

Lasting impact on your life

“I don't think they (motorists) realise the impact that it can have on the general public as well as the drivers on board. It's something that sticks with you for the rest of your life.

“You'll never forget that the vision of what happened that day, it'll always hover with you, you know, and it's hard to get past. You just got to deal with it and try to move forward and keep driving the trains.

Both of us, myself and my colleague on that day, we both still talk about it when we get together and have a chat and it's still something that's implanted in his brain and mine and it'll be there for the rest of our careers. I don't understand it. Why, for the sake of a couple of minutes, they could lose their lives that easily.”

Two incidents that can’t be forgotten

“I can still picture it clear as day. The car with the lady rushing past and that baby still in that little capsule, had a little white single and in the nappy. You know, I can still picture that quite clearly as it disappeared under the front of the locomotive. You know, we must have I missed it by probably a metre or so. If our reaction time had not been what it was, I think we probably would have hit that car and probably could have been two fatalities that day very easily.

“The second incident was west of Gracemere. We came through a cutting and I looked over the top of the cutting to see an excavator and it was out of the ordinary. So I went straight to emergency brake application and we came around the corner as we went up to the road crossing.

“It was a trailer with a low-loader excavator on the back of it, and he was occupying the road crossing. So myself and Geoff, we left the cab and went into the vestibule to find refuge, some sort of safety, squatted down and I was looking through the window, through the windscreen of the train, and I said to him, ready, one, two, three, brace.

“And we braced and there was no impact. And just very quiet and the smell of the brakes and we looked at each other. When we got into the front of the cab, a track protection officer came up beside the train and knocked on the side of the locomotive. I looked out and he was yelling “missed by inches, just inches”.

You can watch the video with these important safety messages from Grant, other rail colleagues and first responders here. You can also get a range of resources of level crossing safety to share in your community and in schools here.

Aurizon is Australia’s largest rail freight business, operating in every mainland state and the Northern Territory, with more than 80% of our 6,000-strong workforce living and working in regional communities across the nation.