According to TasRail chief executive Damien White, trespasser incidents have increased by 100 per cent over the past year and level crossing incidents with motor vehicles increased by 14 per cent.

TasRail employees worked together with 16 members of the Tasmanian Fire Service on Tuesday to complete a number of exercises aimed to simulate potentially fatal accidents.

“We’re a little bit fed up that these exercises have become a reality at some point in time,” he said.

“The obvious thing [trespassers] risk is injury to themselves, but the other thing people probably don’t understand is the trauma for our employees.

“The drivers literally are sitting on the edge of their seat in some locations not knowing what trespassers might do.

“There is no doubt that collisions of this nature can affect an individual’s ongoing health and well-being.”

The combined drills saw mock extractions of people from under trains, requiring emergency responders to secure a 100-tonne locomotive and lift the carriage to reach the trapped dummy. 

While TasRail and the TFS have conducted similar exercises in the past, they have been sporadic in their timing. 

Starting with today’s session, the plan is to run combined critical response training sessions once a year.

“There’s been a couple [accidents] over the last 10 years that have been very challenging for crews and this has probably generated a need to train at least [yearly] with TasRail,”  TFS station officer Alisdair Williams said. 

“[TasRail’s] experts are very good for us to work with, without working together we wouldn't achieve the same outcome at all.”

The TFS has increased its capacity to deal with train collisions and accidents in light of the recent uptick in incidents. 

“We’re better equipped than we were before and as things get heavier and more technical we’ll move along with those times,” Mr Williams said.

“We’re dealing with weights [in these situations] we don’t deal with regularly.”

Mr White said many people who cross train lines in Tasmania were not intentionally trying to cause vandalism or trouble.

He blamed the surging number of incidences as a product of insufficient awareness of the potential dangers.

“There’s a spike around school holidays and there’s an overall complacency in Tasmania about our freight network,” Mr White said. 

“The reality is we’re running more trains more frequently, they’re heavier, so the rail network isn’t an environment to be playing in. 

“It really is an awareness issue and it really does start with school kids – there are a lot of programs through schools and making some generational change that we’re looking for here.”

The North-West of the state was highlighted as a hot spot for trespassers and collisions on the rail network. 

Mr White said there had been a large number of incidents in the area, particularly highlighting bridges as having a high incidence of trespassers.  

“Bridges are places where people fish or jump off, particularly in the summer months,” he said.

A more immediate solution TasRail has put in place to stop trespassers is install a broad surveillance network around train corridors. 

Mr White said he believed the increased surveillance activity around particular areas had started to act as a deterrent in some instances.