Sydney family heartbroken at learning rail staff buried beloved dog killed on tracks

A Sydney family is heartbroken by the discovery their beloved missing dog was hit by a train and buried next to train tracks by rail staff.

Tammy, a six-year-old jack russell-cross, went missing from Sydney’s Inner West on September 23.

Arthur and Co. Pet Detectives owner Anne-Marie Curry was hired to help the family find the rescue dog, posting an image and information about Tammy on social media.

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The post quickly went viral, catching the attention of one local who mentioned they had spotted a dead dog matching Tammy’s description beside Sydenham railway station.

“We spoke with Sydney Trains staff and they told us that, yes, there was a deceased dog on the tracks which matched Tammy’s description and it had been buried,” Curry told 7NEWS.com.au

In an updated post, Curry told locals she was yet to identify the dog and was seeking further information from locals and rail staff.

“By that afternoon we got a call to say that staff had retrieved the body … and that it’s in a box on the side of the tracks if you want to come by and get it,” Curry said.

Curry said she was “flabbergasted” at that point.

“We were just a little bit frustrated … we were grateful that they had gone and exhumed the body but they just left it in a box and I was worried about what would happen to it,” she said.

“So we went and arranged for it to be expeditiously collected.”

When the body was collected, Tammy’s collar and ID tags were found and a microchip scan later confirmed the dog was Tammy.

“It is sort of just mind-boggling for us because the collar was with the body and you just think of the time and the resources that it would take to ring the number on the ID tag and say ‘Hi your dog is here I’ve got some sad news’ — it would be so much easier to make that call and put the body in a box and arrange for it to be collected,” Curry said.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland told 7NEWS.com.au he was “saddened to hear the news about Tammy”.

“Sydney Trains staff assisted in returning Tammy to her owner, providing closure for the family and the community,” he said.

“We understand this is a sensitive topic and we will continue to work with the local council, vets and the RSPCA to improve our methods for dealing with deceased pets found with identification in the rail corridor.

“Sydney Trains offers its condolences to Tammy’s family.”

Curry agreed Sydney Trains’ policy for deceased family pets may need to be looked at separately to how they deal with wild animals found dead near tracks.

“They deal with these dead animals so swiftly because it’s upsetting to the public,” she said.

“But often in dealing with it so swiftly they might overlook some of the human elements to it.

“The family could have been looking for Tammy and chasing every lead and putting up posters for a long time and never gotten answers.

“The lack of closure for pet owners is a haunting sentence.”