Train wrecks

[Nasus]

*A popular past time in Suffolk County in the early 1900s was visiting train wrecks and derail- ments, Ron Ziel and George Foster said in their Long Island Rail Road history, "Steel Rails to the Sunrise" (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965). The wreck shown here took place on 5th Ave. in Bay Shore around July 10, 1909, and appears to have been caused by a locomotive plowing into the back of another train, according to a hand-written note on the photographic plate.


(Long Island Maritime Museum Photo)

*From Newsday

[Nasus]

It was the worst train wreck in Long Island Rail Road history, and it happened on the night of November 22, 1950.

On a stretch of track east of the Kew Gardens Long Island Rail Road Station, a night-time New York to Hempstead commuter train came to a stop because its brakes would not release. As its motorman began working on the problem, a brakeman got out of the rear car and stood on the tracks holding a red lantern to warn any approaching train of its presence. Because there was no automatic stopping mechanism on these tracks, the Railroad's operating rules required the brakeman to do this whenever his train was stopped under circumstances in which it might be overtaken by another train. The brakeman was obligated under those rules to "insure full protection" of his train, and if necessary to accomplish that, he was to display a lighted "fusee" or put down "torpedos".
Note:

A "fusee" is a type of flare which burns bright red for 10 - 15 minutes. It is very similar to the flares Highway Patrolmen put around the scene of a traffic accident.

"Torpedos" are explosive caps fastened to the top of the rail and exploded by the pressure of a rolling wheel. They warn a motorman of danger ahead.

A "brakeman" (also called a trainman") is the lowest ranking member of a train crew. His duties are to assist the conductor in anyway possible. Despite what the title suggests, a 1950 Long Island Rail Road brakeman was not responsible for the good working order of the train's brakes.

The brakeman soon heard the Hempstead train power up. He thought the braking problem was solved and that the train was about to get underway. So, he extinguished the lantern and reboarded the rear car. That was a mistake. It was not for the brakeman to guess when to return to the train. Under the Railroad's rules, he was to remain on the tracks until recalled by a specific signal from the train's whistle, and no such signal was ever given. In any case, the brakeman had guessed wrong. The brakes had still not released and the Hempstead train remained rooted to the ground. Now, however, it stood unprotected in the dark of night, with no rear warning lantern, fusee or torpedo to alert an oncoming train it was there. It was almost 6:30 PM - the middle of rush hour - when commuter traffic in that direction was four times heavier than during off-peak periods.

Probably seconds after the brakeman extinguished the warning lantern, a New York to Babylon train came around the bend about 4,600 feet back. At this point, the Babylon train received a "Go Slow" signal indicating congestion up ahead, so it reduced its speed to 15mph. However, as it passed through the Kew Gardens Station area, the motorman of the Babylon train caught sight of the next signal one half mile in the distance. That signal showed "All Clear". It never dawned on him that the All Clear signal was meant for the Hempstead train stalled in darkness only a third of a mile ahead. Since the Hempstead train no longer displayed a rear warning lantern, the motorman of the Babylon train did not see it was there. (Although the rear of the Hempstead train had two red lights called "marker lights", those lights were so small that they would not have been visible to him until too late.) Thinking the "All Clear" was meant for him, he increased speed. As the Babylon train left the Kew Gardens Station area and emerged from the Lefferts Boulevard overpass, it was traveling at about 35mph.

Meanwhile, on the Hempstead train, the brakeman had signaled his motorman that he was back onboard and that the train could proceed. The train did not move, The brakeman signaled again, and still the Hempstead train did not move. The brakeman was preparing to get back out on the tracks when the oncoming Babylon train struck from the rear. In the last seconds of his life, the motorman of the Babylon train had tried to apply his emergency brakes, but he succeeded only in slowing the Babylon train to about 30mph before impact. The force of the collision pushed the Hempstead train a distance of 75 feet, lifting its last car 15 feet into the air and splitting it lengthwise. The Babylon train had the superstructure of its first car sheared off to the floor and demolished. The rear brakeman was injured but survived. The collision left 78 dead and 363 injured. One witness described the dead as "packed like sardines in their own blood".


Press accounts in the aftermath of the collision had the Babylon train going 60 to 65mph at the time it hit. However, the Interstate Commerce Commission investigated the collision and found the speed at impact was about 30mph. Had the Babylon train been going 60mph or more, the resulting devastation would have been much worse and most likely other cars in the two trains would have separated or derailed. That did not happen. Only slight damage was suffered by the other cars all of which remained connected and on track.

The cause of the crash was officially determined to be disregard of the Go Slow signal by the deceased motorman of the Babylon train. He should have followed the Go Slow signal he had just passed rather than the All Clear signal a half mile ahead. However, the Interstate Commerce Commission's Report on the crash seemed to imply that the brakeman on the Hempstead train had not done all he could have to protect his train - a conclusion I find unavoidable given that the brakeman extinguished his warning lantern and returned to the train before being signaled to do so. It was a clear night, and the brakeman assumed at the time that no train would approach at more than 15mph. So he thought the risk of a casualty was remote. He miscalculated, just as the motorman of the Babylon train miscalculated.

The crash occurred only nine months after a head on collision between two Long Island Rail Road trains at Rockville Centre, NY killed 31 and injured 158. According to The Long Island Press newspaper, the two accidents caused the public to view to the Long Island Rail Road as unsafe and irresponsible. Queens District Attorney Charles P. Sullivan called it the "Death Valley Railroad." The disaster led to public demands for increased government scrutiny. Yet, blame for what happened that night extended beyond the Railroad's management to the very State Government that was called upon to take action.

Because the Long Island Rail Road was a monopoly, it was subject to regulation by the New York State Public Service Commission. The Commission had refused to allow the Railroad any rate increases for almost 30 years (1918 - 1947) despite the L.I.R.R.'s increased operating costs and resulting heavy losses. Furthermore, because people always had the option of taking their cars rather than the train, the Long Island Rail Road had to compete for the public's transportation dollars with the various New York State authorities that owned and operated the bridges, tunnels and highways. Unlike the Long Island Rail Road which was heavily taxed in all respects, those authorities paid no tax whatsoever on their real estate, assets or income. Moreover, bridges, tunnels and highways cost much less to maintain than a railroad. All of that left the Long Island Rail Road at a permanent competitive disadvantage, and every effort to level the playing field by providing badly needed subsidies for the Railroad was defeated in the State Legislature.

The result of that kind of transportation policy should not have been hard to foresee. By 1950, the Railroad was starved for cash and it's equipment was old and decrepit. The two cars involved in the crash were built in 1910, more than 40 years earlier. Such cars were the rule, not the exception. One newspaper reporter cracked that if the Long Island Rail Road were a model train set, it would make a little boy cry to find it under his Christmas Tree. On the date of the collision, the Long Island Rail Road had already filed for bankruptcy reorganization and was operating under the supervision of two bankruptcy trustees. Two days after the crash, Governor Dewey told The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper that $50,000,000 was needed just to make the Long Island Rail Road, "reasonably safe and to insure something approaching satisfactory operation." That was money the perennially cash poor Railroad just did not have, and the State Government had mostly itself to blame for the situation.

In the aftermath of the crash, Automatic Speed Control (ASC) was installed on the tracks. The Pennsylvania Railroad (which owned the Long Island Rail Road) agreed to terminate the L.I.R.R.s bankruptcy and begin a 12 year, 58 million dollar improvement program. The L.I.R.R. gained exemption from much of its tax burden and the freedom to charge realistic fares.

The point of impact for the collision was 1,960 feet east of the Kew Gardens Long Island Rail Road Station [click here to view an I.C.C. Diagram] near 125th Street - one block west of the Metropolitan Avenue overpass. Although press accounts at the time described that area as Richmond Hill, neighborhood boundaries have long since changed. Today, the site of the collision is considered to be in Kew Gardens.

http://kewgardenshistory.com/ss-lirr-0650.html

[Nasus]

3 KILLED, 37 HURT IN UPTON TRAIN WRECK



Eight Cars Carrying 305th Infantry Topple Over Embankment at Central Islip, L. I.

CAMP UPTON, YAPHANK, L. I., April 15. - Three soldiers were killed and thirty-seven were injured, several seriously, when eight cars of a train bearing 700 members of the 305th Infantry were overturned by a broken rail in the Long Island Railroad near Central Islip, L. I., early this morning. The train of ten cars was on its way to Long Island City. The train had left the camp during the night, and while it was traveling at about thirty miles an hour about three miles east of Central Islip the second car of the train lurched suddenly and rolled down a six-foot embankment into a ditch. Seven other cars were derailed, leaving the locomotive and two cars on the tracks.

Although Supts. J. R. Savage and C. D. Baker of the Long Island Railroad said they thought the derailment was caused by a split rail catching the wheels of one of the coaches, an investigation was begun immediately by army officers to determine whether the wreck had been caused by enemies. An unofficial report upon the accident made to Brig. Gen. Evan M. Johnson tonight was that the wreck had been caused by the accidental breaking of the rail. A separate investigation is being undertaken by District Attorney Leroy M. Young of Suffolk County. Officers on the train reported no suspicious circumstances, although patrols were sent out in all directions immediately to bring in suspicious persons. The rail is being examined in laboratories.

Little information upon the extent of the injuries suffered by the thirty-seven men was given out by the surgeons at the base hospital here tonight, although it was admitted that the injuries of about ten were serious. Others suffered bruises and lacerations and will be able to resume their duties in a few days. The three dead men received fractures of the skulls and died instantly.

Although most of the soldiers were asleep when the cars were derailed, there was no confusion, and without shouting or excitement they climbed out of the doors and windows of the coaches, aiding their comrades who were injured.

As soon as the men were sure they had carried all their dead and injured comrades to the improvised hospital the word was given to the engineer to run to Central Islip with all speed, and within half an hour after the accident the injured men were receiving treatment of physicians and surgeons from the hospital. Meantime officers and surgeons from Camp Upton had mobilized a train of motor trucks and army automobiles and had started with medicines and bandages to the scene of the wreck and the Central Islip Hospital. Three hours after the wreck all the injured men were brought to the camp hospital, where a special corps of surgeons was waiting to give their injuries further attention.

The New York Times, New York, NY 16 Apr 1918

[Nasus]

*From http://arrts-arrchives.com/sagh4.html

[Curly]

Wasnt there a big wreck in the early 1900's involving pickles? Golden Pickle Co. I think....

[Nasus]

Here you go Curly ;D



*The Great Pickle Works Wreck

Gloom taunted the August night in 1926 even before the train crashed. Torrential lightning and rainstorms had plagued New York since at least the day before. The train was running 17 minutes late. And, if the power of superstition be respected, it was Friday the 13th.

As the yuppies of the era headed to the East End for a summer weekend escape from the city, the Long Island Rail Road had its most deadly Suffolk County crash in history. The Shelter Island Express plowed into a pickle factory in Calverton.

Six people were killed, including two young children and their mother, in what soon became known as the Great Pickle Works Wreck.

And one death was more horrific than the next. Harold Fish, a stockbroker and a member of an aristocratic New York family, was thrown from the posh parlor car into Golden's Pickle Works and trapped by twisted steel from the wreckage. Tons of salt from damaged barrels on an upper floor poured down on him like sand through an hourglass, smothering him as he yelled for help and struggled to push the salt away from his mouth.

Rescue workers couldn't cut away the steel quickly enough to get him out. Others managed to help another man in a similar position by cupping their hands above his mouth and catching the salt, which was used in the pickle brine, and tossing it aside as rescuers struggled to free him.

LIRR engineer William Squires and fireman John Montgomery were pinned against the boiler in the locomotive's engine room, crushed by tons of coal that tumbled out of the coal tender as the engine fell to its side off the tracks. The steam pipes burst, hitting them with blasts of 600-degree superheated steam.

``When they reached the body of one of the crew, they pulled him out and his legs stayed in the coal pile. He was like a lobster. Steamed,'' said railroad historian Ron Ziel of Water Mill, who has written six books about the Long Island Rail Road.

The wreck happened at 6:08 p.m. Engine No. 214 was leading the two-engine Shelter Island Express to Greenport with more than 350 passengers. The express traveled only on Fridays, taking people to weekend holidays. Accounts say it was traveling from 40 to 70 mph when it jumped a switch leading to the pickle works. The first engine fell to its side, while the second flew toward the factory with the train behind it, news reports said.

The Pullman parlor car, which was called Easter Lily, was directly behind the second engine, and every passenger who died in the wreck had been seated in that luxury car, with its chairs that swiveled and a waiter who served drinks. There was a smoker car and five day coaches on the train as well.

Decades ago, Ziel spoke with witnesses to the wreck, who told him the damaged train looked like a black worm. They said there had been the sound of a tremendous crash, and then dead silence.

The others killed were Mrs. George A. Shuford of Biltmore, N.C., and her two children, George A. Jr., 3, and Dorothy, 1. The two children were crushed in the parlor car wreckage. Their mother was pinned beneath the car for more than six hours, but was awake.

``Patiently and without a whimper Mrs. Shuford lay in the rain until the workmen had cut her free,'' reported The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Workers cut through the steel around her with torches. Before she was extricated, she ate a sandwich and had coffee, The Eagle reported. But six hours after she reached Southampton Hospital, she was dead of internal burns suffered from inhaling steam. She had been assured her children were fine, The New York Times said, and still thought they were at the time of her death.

Shuford, an only child, had been with her parents in the parlor car. She had been visiting them for a couple of weeks. Her father, Charles A. Angell, was the head of a Brooklyn contracting firm and a well-known resident of Shelter Island. With Shuford as well was her maid, who also was pinned in the wreckage and had to have her left leg amputated to get her out.

Pictures from the day of the wreck show the pickle works caved into itself, with the almost comical giant sign shaped like a big, green pickle, still hanging above the attic windows. ``Golden's,'' it said on the pickle.

There were various explanations for the wreck, from tampering with the track switch to its mechanical failure, said Vincent F. Seyfried, a Long Island Rail Road historian. ``Probably no one could really pin it down,'' he said. ``It's tough to reconstruct exactly what happened.''

The most popular theory is that the disaster was caused by a missing cotter pin on the switch. A switch facilitates the movement of the train from one track to another. A nut and bolt fasten the control rod to the switch. The cotter pin keeps the nut from unscrewing and falling off.

In this case, investigators said that the cotter pin had not been replaced, perhaps during maintenance. Investigators surmised that when the first engine passed by the split where the main track divided from a side track leading to the pickle factory, the vibration of the passing locomotive caused the nut to work loose. The second engine then jumped off the main track toward the factory.

``For one lousy little piece of metal that, if stretched out, would have been 4 inches long, those people got killed and they had a terrible wreck,'' Ziel said.

About 300 rescuers worked by floodlights and flashlights and flashes of lightning to help the injured and to try to save the dying. The mud from the storms made their work slow and painstaking, newspapers reported.

The pickle factory was demolished and never reopened. The train locomotives, both more than 20 years old, were hauled to the scrap yard.

There's no sign now that the wreck ever took place. And life goes on.

In 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the Great Pickle Works Wreck, Ziel went to Calverton and hung a black wreath on a telephone poll near where the wreck occurred. And he took a picture as a modern LIRR train -- with the same name, the Shelter Island Express -- passed by his makeshift memorial.

*From Newsday

[nocturnal396]

Wow, great stuff Nasus. good reading

[Nasus]

Thanks Is pretty good reading for sure.

[lubby]

it is not actually a train wreck but a train accident where some teens on prom night tried to beat the train in their van by mineola train tracks. I remember a tv movie was made about it. I think it took place in the late 70's early 80's. i think only one survived and drinking may have been invloved. I tried looking it up but came up empty handed. where can i look for train accidents on LI? i mean like people getting hit by trains.

[Bruce]

I don't think there is a database on LIRR wrecks. I do remember up until the early 70's many people killed at grade crossings with no gates. I remember a tracker-trailer accident on Scuttle Hole Road crossing in Bridgehampton about 1965 where the engineer was killed. Usually the other way around. Nowadays it is people walking on the tracks, intoxed. and sleeping on the tracks or fishing off trestles who are hit. A girl at Amagansett was killed several years ago leaning out doorway of the train and her head struck a signal post next to the tracks. Last year a woman about 90 driving in Bridgehampton ignored the downed gates and collided with a LIRR train. Her car was destroyed but she lived. Lucky, usually you don't survive being hit by a train.