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Rail agency Ontrack is puzzled by - but cannot rule out - a suggestion that warning bells and lights were not operating at a State Highway 1 level-crossing a day before a husband and wife were killed by a train.
"It's conceivable but highly unlikely," spokesman Kevin Ramshaw said last night, of an account from a Palmerston North family who drove through the crossing at Ohingaiti south of Taihape at around 7am on Friday.
That was 24 hours before South African immigrants Brent and Renee Coombes were killed when a southbound freight train hit their car there.
Their 5-year-old daughter Reef survived the crash and is being consoled by her aunt, Kim Smith, and others at the Coombes' Wellington home, pending a move to Auckland to live with Mrs Smith and her husband.
Polytechnic lecturer Paul Walton was driving with his wife and children in the same northbound direction when they saw a train bearing down on them as they passed through the crossing, which is on a difficult S-bend in the road and has no protective barrier arms.
"As we were going across the lines I looked up the track and to my surprise there was a train coming at us," Mr Walton told the Herald.
He acknowledged difficulty estimating head-on distances, but believed the train was no more than 100m to 200m away. "There were definitely no bells or lights going - we were all discussing how close the train was and we were looking back to see if the barrier arms were down, only to see there were none."
Mr Ramshaw said he would have expected the train driver to have reported any malfunction, and insisted the alarms were working before the Coombes were hit the next day. He said a signals engineer had checked for faults on Saturday, without finding any, and a witness from a following car had supplied a statement saying the bells and lights were on.
Police believe the Coombes' vision may have been obscured by sun strike but are not ruling out other factors.
Mr Ramshaw said alarms were triggered at a point which allowed at least 22 seconds' leeway before a train reached a crossing. The standard rail speed at Ohingaiti is 80km/h, meaning they should have been activated from almost 500m away.
But the owner of the Royal Hotel next to the crossing, Mike Maher, said the bells and lights never started until southbound trains had passed through another crossing - of a local road 200m to 300m further north.
