Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster

Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster
Wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly, January 20, 1877
Details
Date	December 29, 1876
Time	7:28 p.m.
Location	Ashtabula / Edgewood, Ohio, USA
Country	United States
Operator	Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway
Type of incident	Derailment
Cause	Bridge collapse
Statistics
Trains	1
Passengers	159
Deaths	92
Injuries	64

The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster (also called the Ashtabula Horror or the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster) was a train disaster caused by bridge failure in far northeastern Ohio on December 29, 1876, at 7:28 p.m. It was the worst rail accident in the USA until the Great Train Wreck of 1918.

One or perhaps two of the bridge designers later committed suicide. The disaster helped focus efforts to draw up standards for bridges including adequate testing and inspection.

Background

The bridge, designed jointly by Charles Collins and Amasa Stone, was the first Howe-type wrought iron truss bridge built. Collins was reluctant to go through with building the bridge calling it "too experimental."

Events

The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Train No. 5, The Pacific Express, left a snowy Erie, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of December 29, 1876. As The Pacific Express plowed through the snow and crossed a bridge over the Ashtabula River, about 100 yards (90 m) from the railroad station at Ashtabula, Ohio, the passengers heard a terrible cracking sound. In just seconds, the bridge fractured and the train plunged 70 feet (21 m) into the water.

The lead locomotive "Socrates" made it across the bridge, while the second locomotive, "Columbia" and 11 railcars including two express cars, two baggage cars, one smoking car, two passenger cars and three sleeping cars and a caboose fell into the ravine below, then igniting a raging fire. The wooden cars were set aflame by kerosene-heating stoves and kerosene burning lamps. Some cars landed in an upright position and within a few minutes small localized fires became an inferno.

The rescue attempt was feeble at best because of the ill-preparedness of the nearby station to respond to emergencies. Of 159 passengers and crew on board that night, 64 people were injured and 92 were killed or died later from injuries sustained in the crash (48 of the fatalities were unrecognizable or consumed in the flames). It is unclear how many died of the fall, separate from the blaze. Matters were made worse by the heavy snow the area had just received.

The famous hymn-writer Philip Bliss and his wife lost their lives in the disaster.

Twenty years later, in Ashtabula's Chestnut Grove Cemetery, a monument was erected to all those "unidentified" who perished in the Ashtabula Railroad disaster.

Investigation

The following is the official recorded summary of this disaster as recorded in the Ashtabula County archives in 1877:

"December 29, 1876, was the date of the occurrence; the time of day about half past seven o'clock in the evening. At that moment the Pacific Express, No. 5, bound westward over the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railway, broke through the iron bridge that spanned the Ashtabula river on the line of the road, and suddenly plunged with a precious cargo of human life into a chasm seventy feet deep. The night was a wild and bitter one. A furious snow-storm had raged all the previous day, and had heaped great masses of snow along and across the track. The wind was a cold, biting one, and was blowing with a velocity of about forty miles per hour. The darkness was dense. On such a night as this the train, composed of eleven coaches, and drawn by two heavy engines, approached the fated bridge, located about one thousand feet east of the Ashtabula station. It was more than two hours behind the time for its arrival. On board there were not less than one hundred and fifty six human souls. There were two express cars, two baggage cars, three passenger coaches, one of them the smoking car, one drawing room coach, and three sleeping coaches. The bridge was an iron structure, and carried a double track. It consisted of two trusses of the Howe truss type, and the length of the span between abutments was one hundred and fifty feet. The train approached the bridge on the south track. At the moment of the crash, one engine, by a sudden plunge forward, had gained the west abutment, while the other engine, two express cars, and part of the baggage car rested with their weight upon the bridge. The remainder of the train was drawn into the gulf. Of the persons on board, at least eighty perished in the wreck; at least sixty three were wounded more or less, but escaped from death; five died after their rescue."

The Ohio Historical Marker for the Ashtabula Train Disaster

Charles Collins, among others, was forced to testify before an investigative jury about the accident. Days after completing his testimony, Collins was found dead in his bedroom of a gunshot wound to the head. It was originally believed that Collins committed suicide out of grief and feeling partially responsible for the tragic accident. A police report at the time suggested that the wound had not been self-inflicted., however no real investigation was attempted due to raw nerves surrounding the tragedy. Recent documents discovered in 2001 revealed thorough examination of Charles Collins' skull, to the conclusion that he had indeed been murdered He was entombed in his own mausoleum yards away from the victims' mass grave.

Amasa Stone committed suicide about two years later after he was found partly responsible by the investigative jury.

Some recent authors have attributed the accident to fatigue of the cast iron lug pieces which were used to anchor the wrought iron bars of the truss together. Many were poorly made, and needed shims of metal inserted to hold the bars in place.

References

• The Ashtabula Railroad Disaster, from the Ashtabula Historical Railroad Foundation. Website includes pictures of the bridge before and after the collapse and additional information.
• Peet, Stephen Denison, (1831-1914). The Ashtabula Disaster. Chicago, Ill. : J.S. Goodman, 1877. Via Internet Archive.
• Ashtabula Train Disaster of 1876, from the Ohio Historical Society.
• Ghosts of the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster

See also

• Lists of rail accidents