The Angola Horror | |
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Details | |
Date | December 18, 1867 3:11 pm |
Location | Angola, New York, U.S. |
Country | United States |
Line | Lake Shore Railway |
Operator | Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad |
Incident type | Derailment |
Cause | Poor track condition |
Statistics | |
Trains | 1 |
Deaths | 49 |
The Angola Horror [note 1] train wreck occurred on December 18, 1867, just after 3 p.m. when the last coach of the Buffalo-bound New York Express of the Lake Shore Railway derailed at a bridge in Angola, New York, United States, slid down into a gorge, and caught fire, killing some 49 people. At the time, it was one of the deadliest train wrecks in American history. [2] [3]
On the morning of December 18, 1867, the New York Express left Cleveland's Union Depot at 6:40 a.m. and was due to arrive in Buffalo, New York, at 1:30 p.m. John D. Rockefeller planned to make the journey, but arrived a few minutes late. His baggage made it onto the train; he did not. That day the train consisted of four baggage cars, one second-class car and three first-class cars. Each wooden passenger car had a pot-bellied stove at each end to provide heat, and kerosene lamps for light. The train lost time on the journey. By the time it passed Angola, it was running two hours and forty-five minutes late, traveling rapidly to try to make up lost time. Its last passenger stop before the accident was at Dunkirk; it also stopped at Silver Creek, but only to take on wood and water. [4]
The train was formed of so-called "compromise cars", which were designed to allow trains to run on both the 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge of the New York Central Railroad as well as the 4 ft 10 in (1,473 mm) Ohio gauge of the Lake Shore Railroad. [5] This allowed 3⁄8 inch (9.5 mm) lateral movement on the Ohio gauge and created instability. As the train neared the truss bridge over Big Sister Creek just east of Angola at 3:11, it ran over a frog (the crossing point of two rails). The front axle of the rear car was slightly bent, and the frog caused a wheel on the defective axle to jump off the track, derailing the rear car, [6] which then swayed violently from side to side. [7] The brakes were applied, but the train still traveled at considerable speed as it crossed the bridge. The last car uncoupled from the train and plunged down into the icy gorge. The second-to-last car also derailed, but made it to the other side of the gorge before sliding 30 feet (9 m) down the embankment. [8] Only one person was killed in this car. [9]
The last car plunged 40 feet (12 m) down the ice-covered slope to the gully bottom and came to a rest, at a 45-degree angle, with a fearful crash. [9] The passengers were thrown together at the end of the car onto the overturned stove. The stove from the other end of the car fell upon them and released hot coals. The carriage immediately caught fire, the fuel from the kerosene lamps fueling the flames. Only two people escaped alive from the carriage; some may have suffocated, but the majority were burned alive. Witnesses spoke of hearing the screams of those trapped inside lasting for five minutes. [6] [10]
The accident, dubbed the "Angola Horror", gripped the imagination of the nation. Accounts of the tragedy, accompanied by grisly illustrations, filled the pages of newspapers for weeks and showed the tragedy of those trying to identify their loved ones among the charred remains that were pulled from the wreckage. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper carried five sketches of the scene [11] and concluded, "This railroad disaster is accompanied by more horrible circumstances than ever before known in this country, and its results are truly sickening to contemplate". [10]
The accident and the public outcry that arose from it influenced many railroad reforms that soon followed, including the replacement of loosely secured stoves with safer forms of heating, more effective braking systems and the standardization of track gauges. [10]
In 2008, the villagers of Angola reserved a .03-acre (0.012 ha) parcel of land along Commercial Street [12] and erected a sign to mark the site of the accident, dedicated to its victims. A second memorial to at least 17 unidentified victims buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo was planned [13] and later erected in 2015. [14]
Angola is a village in the town of Evans in Erie County, New York, United States. Located 2 miles (3 km) east of Lake Erie, the village is 22 miles (35 km) southwest of downtown Buffalo. As of the 2010 Census, Angola had a population of 2,127. An unincorporated community known as Angola on the Lake, with a population of 1,675, lies between Angola village and Lake Erie.
The Erie Railroad was a railroad that operated in the Northeastern United States, originally connecting Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City, New Jersey, with Lake Erie at Dunkirk, New York. The railroad expanded west to Chicago following its 1865 merger with the former Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, also known as the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad.
The Great Western Railway was a railway that operated in Canada West, today's province of Ontario, Canada. It was the first railway chartered in the province, receiving its original charter as the London and Gore Railroad on March 6, 1834, before receiving its final name when it was rechartered in 1845.
On February 6, 1951, a Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed on a temporary wooden trestle in Woodbridge, New Jersey, United States, killing 85 passengers. It remains New Jersey's deadliest train wreck, the deadliest U.S. derailment since 1918 and the deadliest peacetime rail disaster in the U.S. history.
The Connellsville train wreck was a rail accident that occurred on December 23, 1903, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad near Connellsville, Pennsylvania. The Duquesne Limited, a passenger train, derailed when it struck a load of timber lying on the tracks. The timber had fallen from a freight train minutes before the collision. The crash resulted in 64 deaths and 68 injuries.
The Corning train wreck was a railway accident that occurred at 5.21 a.m. on July 4, 1912, on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad at East Corning freight station in Gibson three miles east of Corning in New York State, leaving 39 dead and 88 injured.
During the evening rush hour on August 24, 1928, an express subway train derailed immediately after leaving the Times Square station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. Sixteen people were killed at the scene, two died later, and about 100 were injured. It remains the second-deadliest accident on the New York City Subway system, after the Malbone Street Wreck.
On April 14, 1907, northbound freight train No.23 of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, operating on the Rome and Richland branch of the former Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad crashed when the bank on the lower side of the track failed and a section slid down the hill undermining the track. The accident occurred approximately 2.5 miles south of Blossvale, a hamlet in the Oneida County, New York, town of Annsville. The sixty-car freight train, carrying coal and other freight was pulled by engines No. 1726 and 1863. Both engines plunged down the sixty foot embankment. The lead engine came to rest in an inverted position while the second engine was on its side. Both engines and several cars were destroyed by fire. In addition to the two engines, a total of fifteen cars derailed.
A train crash with fatalities occurred shortly after 11:30 p.m. on April 19, 1940, when a first-class westbound Lake Shore Limited operated by the New York Central Railroad, derailed near Little Falls, New York, United States. The accident was later found to have occurred due to excessive speed on the Gulf Curve, the sharpest on the Central's lines. It killed 31; an additional 51 were injured.
On August 12, 1939, the City of San Francisco train derailed outside of Harney, Nevada, United States, killing 24 and injuring 121 passengers and crew. The derailment was caused by sabotage of the tracks. Despite a manhunt, reward offers, and years of investigation by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), the case remains unsolved.
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.
In 1890 a railway accident in Quincy, Massachusetts killed 23 people. It was the second major train wreck in the city, following the 1878 accident in Wollaston. The accident was caused by a jack that had been left on the track. The foreman of the crew that placed the jack on the track was charged with manslaughter, but the trial ended in a hung jury.
... a terrible repetition of the recent terrible Angola horror near Buffalo.