George Wilkie McCall

The Sunshine rail disaster occurred on 20 April 1908 at the junction at Sunshine railway station when a Melbourne-bound train from Bendigo collided with the rear of a train from Ballarat. 44 people were killed and over 400 injured, almost all of them from the Ballarat train, as the Bendigo train was cushioned by its two locomotives.

A temporary mortuary was set up at Melbourne's Spencer Street Station to deal with the dead and wounded, who were transported from Sunshine by special relief trains. The disaster is Victoria's worst railway accident in terms of deaths, and is Australia's second-worst after the 1977 Granville rail disaster.

The subsequent coronial inquiry found that the two drivers of the Bendigo train as well as the Sunshine stationmaster had a manslaughter case to answer, although all three were later acquitted by the Supreme Court of Victoria.