Unbeknown to David as he travelled back to Sydney, the engine of the train he was supposed to be on had derailed beneath the Bold Street Bridge at Granville.

As engine 4620 and the first two carriages passed under the bridge the first carriage broke free and was torn open when it collided with a pole beside the track. Eight passengers were killed.

When the carriages came to a halt the second carriage was clear of the bridge, but the rear half of the third and forward half of the fourth stopped right beneath the weakened structure.

With all its supports demolished it took only seconds for the bridge and several cars on top of it to crash onto the carriages below.

“We got to Clyde and there were a lot of railway people running around the platform; and we stopped at Clyde, which we normally didn’t do, those mountain trains were normally last stop Penrith then Strathfield and Sydney,” David recalled.

“This assistant station master looked at me in a conductor’s uniform and said ‘What are you?’ and I said (you know, trying to cover my own tracks that I was on the wrong train) I said ‘I’m the conductor’; and he said ‘we need everyone we can get up to Granville’.

“He just said a commuter train had derailed, so anyway, there was me and a couple of other station assistants bundled off into a railway vehicle and we were driven up there and we all sort of pitched in,” David said.

In the midst of the carnage beneath the Bold Street Bridge the engine driver and second man, and motorists driving across the bridge when it collapsed, had all survived.

But many passengers in the third and fourth carriages were killed instantly when they were crushed in their seats by the falling slab of the concrete bridge.

Some injured passengers were trapped in the train, by part of the bridge crushing a limb or torso, for hours after the accident.

There were those who had been conscious and lucid, they talked to rescuers and then died of crush syndrome soon after the weight was removed from their bodies. The sudden release of substances such as potassium from the injured limb proved deadly.

“In those days there was no sort of SES, there was Police Rescue, they used to wear white overalls with it written on the back and I’ve got vivid memories of working beside the police rescue guys,” David said.

“We just sort of did what we could for as many people as we could. I don’t know how many people I pulled out at Granville, the reason I don’t know is because I was there and the next minute there was a police rescue guy saying ‘you can go home now’, it was that sort of memory.

“But inside the carriages…outside the carriages…I’d only be guessing the number, you know.

“And being one of the first there, you know, I was only 15 to 20 minutes behind the whole thing, and it took them that long to organise emergency services at Granville anyway…it’s like a bomb goes off and you don’t know how long you have been laying beside the crater, does that make sense?

“Everyone there was just doing everything they could. There were a lot of people there, I remember, yelling from up on the side, it wasn’t happening fast enough, but they didn’t realise they were trying to cut this concrete bridge with jackhammers, and there was still a possibility of people being alive there, and everything just took time.

“But, yes, some of the abuse people yelled down at everyone, it wasn’t good, it wasn’t nice, it was just the frustration of the situation.”

The last person pulled out alive subsequently died and David said that was very sad; fragmented is the best way he can describe the memories of his actions on a day.

And the knowledge that the conductors compartment where he was supposed to be was under the middle of the bridge haunted him for longer than he could have imagined.

“When the police rescue guy said I could go home, well that was bad too, I was still in my conductor’s uniform.”

And the uniform was filthy after a day spent amid the rubble of the train wreck.

“I found my way to Strathfield and it was evening because the next train in was the Brisbane Limited, and I thought I’d just jump on the Brisbane Limited to Gosford. The head conductor took one look at me and said ‘you’re a disgrace to the uniform you’re wearing!’ and he threw me off at Hornsby!

“The Gold Coast Motor Rail used to follow the Brisbane Limited by 10 minutes and it pulled in to Hornsby and its head conductor took one look at me and said ‘what the hell happened to you?’.

“Anyway, I said I had just come from Granville and told him the story about the Brisbane Limited and he pulled me onto the train and sat me down in his conductor’s compartment and introduced me to a very good friend called Johnny Walker.”

That introduction became a very long association with alcohol for David, one that he struggled with for years.

“I crawled inside that bottle and stayed there for quite a few years, actually,” David said.

“Back in those days you didn’t get any sort of counselling or anything, and you didn’t think you needed it anyway, you know, like. Boys don’t cry, that sort of thing and I didn’t realise at the time that it probably did affect me, it was a very tragic and sad situation.

“And commuters, they didn’t really like conductors at all, and we were the visible people, we were in the trains checking the tickets and we were the ones people would vent their hurt and anger on and you can’t blame them; 83 innocent people died at Granville because of a simple flange on a locomotive,” David said.

By 1996 David he was working on taxis on the Central Coast.

But he could see trouble brewing there. He noticed there were a lot of ways the youth of the day could get themselves into trouble.

“The best example I can give of this is my eldest daughter, she was known to police; but after moving to Ashford and a few years there she ended up as a police officer,” David said.

“I can’t give a better example of the lifestyle difference, of course she’s left the police force now and has got to be one of the most beautiful mum’s in the world to her three children.

“I was always a city boy, my wife actually came up with the idea to move and they tell me my finger marks are still in the ground down in the Central Coast, I didn’t want to go at first, but I’m just so lucky that we went to Ashford because the people in that community are just some of the best people I have ever met in my life,” David said.

The Granville Memorial Trust was established after the 1977 accident to commemorate the victims and campaign for improvements to rail safety.

Meanwhile, David left the railways about one year after the Granville train disaster, but returned a year later as a station assistant at St James Station.

“Unfortunately there was a bar too close to the station,” David said.

“You isolate yourself, the images never go away.

“A couple of years ago I did seek some professional guidance on this because I had to go to an appointment at Auburn in Sydney, now I hadn’t been there for years but when the train went past Granville everything…you know how those old films had that brown colour in them, the old black and white films get that brownish colour? The whole thing turned brown and I thought it was the window tinting on the carriage.

“When we passed the scene I thought ‘hold on! The windows aren’t tinted’ and I thought ‘I wonder what that was all about?’ but I never went back, I went home a different way by car.

“I just thought I would have it checked out and they reckon that is your brain dealing with just how horrible the vivid colour version would be.”