The Nicholson Road rail crossing was one of the worst in the state for unsafe incidents including leaving objects on the track such as washing machines and cars, according to Brookfield rail safety manager Adam Sidebottom.
His comments came in light of the 10th annual rail safety week, which began on Monday.
In the last year Brookfield has recorded 372 incidents on or near the rail network, up from 254 the previous year with 31 of those incidents in Canning Vale.
These included trespassing, vandalism, hits and near hits with trains.
Mr Sidebottom said there were a number of reasons for Canning Vale’s high incident rate including the population density and busy road.
“We’re seeing a lot of vandalism, people throwing rocks at trains and even leaving washing machines or abandoned cars on the track,” he said.
“In this area in particular, it seems to be the thing to do on a Saturday night is come down to the railway line to chuck something on there and see what happens.”
He said that kind of vandalism delayed trains, caused costly damage and in some cases it could cause injuries.
“If you have a track worker standing nearby they could be hit by debris and often the perpetrators are standing nearby watching it go off so it’s an extremely dangerous situation,” he said.
“It also really shakes the drivers up.
“We’ve had prams put on the tracks and if you imagine that you’re a train driver looking at that, you’re 99 per cent sure that there’s no baby in it and it’s just someone playing a joke but you’re still hitting it.”
He said there was only so much Brookfield could do to prevent incidents on the rail network and at some point people had to take responsibility for themselves.
“We can’t police the entire network, we run through a lot of towns and a lot of suburbs across the state,” he said.
“We can’t just fence the entire network and we’re not a policing authority.
“This is actually a work place and it’s dangerous so unless you need to be here stay off.”
