Camp Mountain
Postcode: 4520
Camp Mountain is a rural locality northwest of Brisbane, Australia, near Samford. It is 20 km north-west of the Brisbane central business district. Parts of it are within the Brisbane Forest Park and a lookout and recreation area is accessible off Mount Nebo Road.
Until 1955 the train line to Dayboro traversed the area and in 1947 was the location of Queensland’s worst railway accident.
The Camp Mountain train disaster occurred at approximately 9:48am on May 5, 1947 when a crowded picnic train derailed on a sharp left-hand curve between Ferny Grove and Camp Mountain stations on the now-closed Dayboro line, approximately 20km northwest of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 16 people were killed, including both the driver and fireman. 38 were injured. This is still the largest loss of life in a rail accident on the Queensland Rail system.
A subsequent Court of Enquiry found that the driver, H.C. Hind, had been rostered to drive a train on a line he had little knowledge of. The driver, who died later in hospital, admitted to others while he was trapped in the wreckage of the locomotive that he did not know the line, but that the fireman had.
The Dayboro line was closed beyond Ferny Grove in 1955 and the right-of-way in the vicinity of the accident site was converted into a rural road, McLean Road South. The accident site is commemorated with a stone cairn on the side of the road.