1943 Frankford Junction train wreck

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Frankford Junction train wreck
Details
DateSeptember 6, 1943
6:06 p.m.
Location Frankford Junction, Pennsylvania
Coordinates 40°00′06″N75°06′02″W / 40.0018°N 75.1006°W / 40.0018; -75.1006
CountryUnited States
Line Northeast Corridor
Operator Pennsylvania Railroad
Incident typeDerailment
Cause Overheated journal box caused axle to break
Statistics
Trains1
Passengers541
Deaths79
Injured117

The Frankford Junction train wreck occurred on September 6, 1943, when Pennsylvania Railroad's premier train, the Congressional Limited, crashed at Frankford Junction in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States, killing 79 people and injuring 117 others.

Contents

Train

Train consist [1]
September 6, 1943
Train#152, Congressional
  • PRR 4930 (class GG1)
  • PRR 4706 coach
  • PRR 3854 coach
  • PRR 3940 coach
  • PRR 3751 coach
  • PRR 3971 coach
  • PRR 3861 coach
  • PRR 1860 coach
  • PRR 3941 coach
  • PRR 8023 lunch-counter-kitchen car
  • PRR 8024 Dining room car
  • Quaker Valley Pullman parlor car
  • Susan B. Anthony Pullman parlor car
  • Bay Head Pullman Parlor car
  • Richard Henry Lee Pullman parlor car
  • Willow River Pullman sleeping car
  • Alexander Hamilton parlor-lounge car

The Congressional Limited traveled between Washington, D.C., and New York City, normally making one stop in Newark, New Jersey, covering the 236 miles (380 km) in 3½ hours at speeds up to 80 mph (130 km/h), remarkable at the time. As it was Labor Day in 1943, the company laid on 16-car trains to accommodate the expected high demand. At Washington's Union Station on Monday, September 6, 541 passengers boarded the 4 p.m. train, its 16 cars hauled by PRR GG1 electric locomotive number 4930, [2] scheduled to travel nonstop to Pennsylvania Station, New York. [3]

Incident

Everything appeared in order as the train passed through North Philadelphia station ahead of schedule and slowed its speed, but shortly afterward, as it passed a rail yard, workers noticed flames coming from a journal box (a hot box) on one of the cars and rang the next signal tower at Frankford Junction, but the call came too late. Before the tower man could react, disaster struck as the train passed his signal tower at 6:06 pm traveling at a speed of 56 mph. [2] The journal box on the front of car No. 7 seized and an axle snapped, catching the underside of the truck and catapulting the car upwards. It struck a signal gantry, which peeled off its roof along the line of windows "like a can of sardines". Car No. 8 wrapped itself around the gantry upright in a figure U. The next six cars were scattered at odd angles over the tracks, and the last two cars remained undamaged, with bodies of the 79 dead lying scattered over the tracks. As it was wartime, many servicemen home on leave were aboard who helped the injured. Workers from the nearby Cramp's shipyard arrived with acetylene torches to cut open cars to rescue the injured, a process that took until the following morning. The rescue work was directed by Mayor Bernard Samuel. [3] The work of removing the dead was not complete until 24 hours after the accident.

Among the survivors was Chinese author Lin Yutang.

Inquiry

In total, 79 passengers died, all from cars No. 7 and No. 8, and 117 were injured, some seriously. The inquiry quickly established the overheated journal box as the cause of the accident, but railroad mechanics who had inspected and lubricated the box earlier that day swore it had been in good order. Normal practice was for signal towermen to watch passing train wheels for signs of problems and for train crew to look back as trains rounded curves. How this hot box escaped attention until too late has never been explained.

Similar incidents

This was not the first railroad accident in which an overheated journal box caused an axle to break and derail a train. The first-ever train wreck involving passenger fatalities, the Hightstown rail accident of 1833, had an identical cause.

71 years and 8 months later, along the same location, an Amtrak train, speeding over 100 mph, derailed along the curve. The 2015 Philadelphia train derailment claimed eight lives as well as injuring many others.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pennsylvania Railroad class GG1</span> Class of American electric locomotives

The Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 is a class of streamlined electric locomotives built for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), in the northeastern United States. The class was known for its striking art deco shell, its ability to pull trains at up to 100 mph, and its long operating career of almost 50 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hot box</span> Overheating of railway rolling stock

A hot box is the term used when an axle bearing overheats on a piece of railway rolling stock. The term is derived from the journal-bearing trucks used before the mid-20th century. The axle bearings were housed in a box that used oil-soaked rags or cotton to reduce the friction of the axle against the truck frame. When the oil leaked or dried out, the bearings overheated, often starting a fire that could destroy the entire railroad car if not detected early enough.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frankford Junction station</span> Former train stop in Pennsylvania; Northeast Corridor-Atlantic City Line meet point

Frankford Junction is a railroad junction, and former junction station, located on the border between the Harrowgate neighborhood of Philadelphia and Frankford, Philadelphia. At the junction, the 4-track Northeast Corridor line from Trenton connects with the 2-track Atlantic City Line from Atlantic City in the northeastern portion of Philadelphia about 2.9 miles (4.7 km) northeast of North Philadelphia station. It lies near the intersection of Frankford Avenue and Butler Street, to the west of the interchange between Interstate 95 and the approach to the Betsy Ross Bridge. It has been used for rail transportation since 1832 but has not served as a station since October 4, 1992.

The 1922 Winslow Junction train derailment was a July 2, 1922 accident on Atlantic City Railroad's Camden to Atlantic City route. Train № 33 the Owl going 90 miles (140 km) per hour sped through an open switch at Winslow Junction. 7 were killed, 89 were injured.

The Hightstown rail accident occurred on the Camden and Amboy Railroad between Hightstown, New Jersey and Spotswood on November 8, 1833, just two months after horses were replaced by steam locomotives on the line. It is the earliest recorded train accident involving the death of passengers in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockport train wreck</span> 1925 railway accident

The Rockport train wreck occurred in Rockport in Mansfield Township, New Jersey, United States, about three miles outside of Hackettstown, on June 16, 1925. A violent storm washed debris onto a grade crossing, derailing a Lackawanna Railroad (DL&W) train. The crash killed 42 passengers and five crewmen and injured twenty-three others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2015 Philadelphia train derailment</span> 2015 railroad accident in Pennsylvania, US

The 2015 Philadelphia train derailment of a New York City-bound Amtrak train in Kensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States resulted in multiple passenger injuries and deaths and disrupted Amtrak service for several days afterward due to the resulting investigation and removal of the wrecked train cars.

The Lackawanna Limited wreck occurred when a Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W) passenger train, the New York-Buffalo Lackawanna Limited with 500 passengers, crashed into a freight train on August 30, 1943, killing 29 people in the small Steuben County community of Wayland in upstate New York, approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of Rochester.

References

  1. Passenger Train Consists of the 1940s. Wayner Publications. p. 18.
  2. 1 2 ICC Investigation No.2726
  3. 1 2 Philadelphia, PA Congressional Limited Train Wrecks, Sep 1943 Archived 2012-03-26 at the Wayback Machine Philadelphia, PA Congressional Limited Train Wrecks, Sep 1943

Further reading