Australia is a different world.....

[Greetlander]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-...res-moment-train-drives-through-blaze/9659488

The moment a passenger train drove through Sydney's bushfire was caught on camera, as more than 1,000 hectares in the city's south-west went up in smoke yesterday.

At one point, flames and spot fires can be seen close to the carriages, as a commuter says: "It's jumped the line already."

Hot and windy conditions did not help efforts to curtail the blaze, which at various stages included water bombers, more than 140 firefighters and a 4-kilometre-long line of trucks...

Just another day on Sydney’s suburban network

 

[John Webb]

Seems to me that the driver of the train was faced with a potential "lose-lose" situation - stop the train and be caught by the fire anyway, or risk driving on and perhaps losing power as he passed by or through it and getting caught that way. The posted video suggests he decided to accelerate to pass through the danger zone as quickly as possible. It would be interesting to know if he was able to get information from the signallers controlling the line to assist his decision, which seems to have been the right one on this occasion.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

Looking at the photograph in the article the line appears to benefit from a decently wide formation with vegetation a reasonable distance away from the tracks. As such I doubt the risk was as great as some would imagine. Unnerving nevertheless.

 

[NSEFAN]

Seems to me that the driver of the train was faced with a potential "lose-lose" situation - stop the train and be caught by the fire anyway, or risk driving on and perhaps losing power as he passed by or through it and getting caught that way. The posted video suggests he decided to accelerate to pass through the danger zone as quickly as possible. It would be interesting to know if he was able to get information from the signallers controlling the line to assist his decision, which seems to have been the right one on this occasion.

I would have thought that getting away from there ASAP was more important than waiting for authority to reverse etc, given the risk of harm to passengers by smoke inhalation.

 

[LesS]

I have not seen this video before.
The train is passing through the suburb of Holsworthy and is inbound to the city. I cannot tell whether the footage was taken on the saturday or sunday. The line in this area was closed for some hours on sunday at least.
This was a busy weekend for local railfans with the annual Steamfest at Maitland in the Hunter Valley and a heritage suburban electric run on the Cronulla branch. I was over at Cronulla, about 10kms in direct line, and the smoke was thick in the air. The smoke clouds in the sky were visible for a radius of 30 or more kms.

Investigators believe that the fire was deliberately lit on the friday afternoon. Hopefully there will be some arrests.

 

[Stonesourscotty]

The Smokeclouds where visible from The entirety of the Katoomba to Central train line amazingly