The Ghan crashes into a road train

Three passengers and a truck driver have been injured after The Ghan derailed when it collided with a road train at a level crossing 135 kilometres south of Darwin.

The truck driver involved in the crash of The Ghan passenger train has been arrested.



A spokesman for Great Southern Railways, the train's operator, said the remaining 79 people on board - 16 crew and 63 passengers - escaped major injury. Nobody was trapped in the crash but a rail rescue container with heavy lifting and cutting equipment was sent to the scene. The clean-up job is expected to take two days.

The Ghan is one of Australia's best-known trains, travelling across central Australia twice a week.

The route, which passes through Alice Springs, takes two nights in either direction and covers 2,979 kilometres.

The Ghan's name is derived from the Afghan camel trains that travelled the same territory between Adelaide and Darwin in the years before the railway.

The line has existed in various forms since the late 19th century, and first ran under its current name in 1929.

A final rail link from Darwin to Alice Springs was completed in 2004.



This is quite incredible when you consider how little traffic would be on this road or the rail track for that matter. It's amazing how many rail crashes occur here. I think it's mainly due to the high frequency of level crossings although there was a recent uproar about the ultra low standard of driving in the Northern Territory. Apparently the worst in the western world. You would have thought on a route like this driving through empty desert you would only need a driver to stop the train when it got to Darwin.