Remembering the fatal train derailment that devastated Finch Hatton 50 years ago

It’s a September night in 1971, and a group of men are sitting near a dry creek bed playing cards by lamp light.

Beside them is the wreckage of a locomotive, upturned and covered in the sugar cane bins it was hauling when it derailed from the bridge above.

As the three mates played poker, one…