The year was 1942 and it was December of that year nearing Christmas, and the late Sam Inglis, a driver on the Western Australian Government Railways, was hauling a troop train travelling from Kalgoorlie to Perth on a very wet night.
This story is relayed by the driver's son Noel Inglis in the 1991 book 'Ripping Good Railway Yarns' compiled by the Footplate Padre, Mark Tronson. It had been raining for a full week and the rivers were up and it was close to being a major flood.
Approaching Burracoppin, driving their PR Pacific steam engine, Sam Inglis sensed that there was something amiss with the upcoming culvert bridge over a small river. The waters were over the bridge but that in itself would not have prevented the train from crossing as steam engines could plough through water.
Sam Inglis pulled the troop train up and asked his fireman to alight from the steam locomotive and physically check out the bridge. The fireman, in this pouring rain, did do and in the murky water could make out the line and sleepers but nonetheless was very unsure of the situation.
The fireman made his way back to the PR Pacific and suggested to Sam, that he himself should check it out as he felt something was wrong but couldn't make it out. Sam Inglis certainly checked it our only to discover that the bridge's supports had all been washed away.
For his efforts Sam Inglis received a Western Australia Government Railways Commissioner's 'commendation; and was written up in the Railway Institute magazine. He had not only saved a bridge and a locomotive, and possibly saved the lives of many of our Australian troops at Christmas time when Australia itself was in peril.
Footplate Padre Mark Tronson then relates this story to the ideas that abound in the 'good book' on sacrifice and how Jesus Christ died on the cross as a sacrifice for the sin of every person. The whole story can be read in 'On Track', http://otrailnews.comfypage.com/