Minutes after his mother stopped breathing, Liam Armstrong's path to the hospital was cut by a passing freight train.
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With the main route to the town's medical help blocked in front of him, Mr Armstrong was faced with an all-too-common Coolamon problem but in a terrifying moment where it was literally a matter of life or death: wait out the train, or travel several more kilometres to work around it.
Luckily for him, Mr Armstrong caught the tail end of the train and was able to get through but had he turned around, or had to wait, his mother might not be here today.
"The doctor said if I had found her five minutes later she would have died," he said.
"If I had got the start of the train and I had to turn around and go around town and back in they reckon she would have died.
"I got extremely lucky but you can't stop not thinking about the next person."
The Junee to Griffith railway line is a passenger and freight line serving numerous freight terminals and runs straight through the Coolamon township, splitting it in two.
The rail line cuts across the town's main street, Cowabbie Street, where the only in-town level crossing is located.
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Other crossings are up to seven kilometres out of town, which requires residents to loop around the town to enter the central point where services like the hospital are located, more than doubling the trip length.
It is a concern that has been highlighted by Mr Armstrong after his recent experience during an emergency trip to the Coolamon-Ganmain Multi Purpose Service, in which his mother had stopped breathing in the passenger seat of his car.
Mr Armstrong's mother had never experienced an allergic reaction prior to the day and had taken a new antihistamine.
Hours later her face was swollen, she could barely speak and her airways were blocked as she desperately tried to seek immediate help.
"She rang me and I could tell she wasn't well," Mr Armstrong said.
"She would have been no use calling the ambulance because she couldn't speak.
"I could barely understand her, so I hung up the phone and I flew straight out there."
When he arrived, Mr Armstrong found his struggling mother fighting for her life as she attempted to get herself to her car.
"She was about five kilometres out of town and I found her hunched over trying to get to her car and her face was swollen up," he said.
"By the time I got her into my car and had driven about 100 metres up the road she had stopped breathing.
"I was coming into town but just when I got just past the silos I spotted the train."
Mr Armstrong's heart flipped in his chest as he began to panic as his access to the hospital became blocked.
While he contemplated turning around and travelling back out of town to the nearest crossing before coming back into town, he knew it was a lengthy and risky trip.
Mr Armstrong said he couldn't get past the feeling of dread he was met with at that moment.
"It just put an immense amount of fear in me as there was no way around it. I felt helpless," he said.
"It's the worst feeling you could have. No one should be in that situation."
Mr Armstrong said if his mother had called the ambulance it would have been a similar situation for them as they too are located on the other side of the town.
It is a concern that has been at the centre of a decade-long fight for action, with the town's mayor, David McCann, saying Coolamon Shire Council had been advocating for a second crossing to be installed for several years.
"We've been arguing with Transport for NSW to have a second crossing installed for over 10 years," Cr McCann said.
"Our emergency services are spread across town, our police and fire brigade are to the northern side of the railway and on the southern side we have the ambulance and the hospital and the people who man those services are spread across town, so we've had situations where volunteers are stuck on one side of town trying to get to the fire appliance.
"It literally splits the town in two."
Cr McCann said he had contacted Member for Cootamundra Steph Cooke and federal Member for Riverina Michael McCormack in a bid to garner their support on the matter.
"Transport for NSW has been very difficult to deal with this situation - they have a policy not to install any more railway crossings," he said.
"In a town like Coolamon, where we are growing and spreading out, to have the town split is simply not good enough.
"Transport for NSW has just completed a rail siding at the silos at a cost of $11.5 million and the rationale behind that was to stop trains being on the main line and blocking the main line during loading operations.
"We were under the belief that the new siding would alleviate the issue but obviously it hasn't."
Coolamon residents currently have to wait sometimes up to 15 minutes for trains to pass through and as they come into harvest season the frequency of trains will increase.
Transport for NSW was contacted for comment.
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