The first images of a freight train buried by a landslide on the South Island's West Coast have been revealed.
KiwiRail is working with geotechnical teams to stabilise the area before going in to recover the stranded locomotive.
The coal train became trapped at 3am Monday, inside a tunnel covered by a hillside of mud and debris.
"There's a massive amount of earth that has come down the hill and has covered the portal of the tunnel," KiwiRail Executive General Manager Paul Ashton said.
Fallen boulders the size of trucks covered the roof of the tunnel.
"The train operating at slow speed hit the slip," Ashton said. "There was a minor derailment of the locomotive."
The only person on board was an engineer who luckily escaped without any injury.
The empty train became trapped in the Buller Gorge near Hawks Crag, travelling northbound from Stillwater.
"It was heading to Ngakawauand that line is used by one of our key customers for the movement of export coal."
The slip is being treated as dangerous and a recovery plan is being worked on.
"With the unstable nature of the earth at the moment we are not putting people in there so we're using drones to assess the extent of damage and then from there we will work through a recovery plan."
KiwiRail can't put a timeline on just when that will happen.
Until then, it's a train that is bound for nowhere.
