Police have charged a man allegedly connected to a passenger train derailment at Kembla Grange.
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Seven days since the emergency, which injured three people and the train's driver, Lake Illawarra detectives swooped on Duley Street at Dapto at 1.30pm today.
A 47-year-old Berkeley man was taken into custody.
He was taken to Lake Illawarra Police Station, where he was charged with take and drive conveyance without consent of owner, two counts of destroy or damage property, larceny, drive motor vehicle during disqualification period, endanger safety of person on railway, cause obstruction to railway locomotive or rolling stock, enter enclosed land not prescribed premises without lawful excuse, and breach bail.
The derailment occurred at 4.05am Wednesday when a four-carriage passenger train struck an unoccupied van left abandoned on the track.
The front carriage of the train rolled off the tracks onto its side. Thirteen occupants were assisted from the carriages, four with minor injuries.
Officers from Lake Illawarra Police District set up a crime scene and began an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Inquiries revealed that the van had allegedly been stolen earlier that morning from a home at Flinders.
During the examination of the scene, police found a go-kart on a trolley in the rail corridor, and a large hole in the security fence that separates the rail corridor from a go-kart business, Wollongong Kart Raceway.
The Berkeley man has been refused bail to appear at Wollongong Local Court tomorrow.
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