Diesel unit split rear passenger car; other cars dented and/or derailed
The Naperville train disaster occurred April 25, 1946, on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad at Loomis Street in Naperville, Illinois, when the railroad's Exposition Flyer rammed into the Advance Flyer, which had made an unscheduled stop to check its running gear. The Exposition Flyer had been coming through on the same track at 80 miles per hour (130km/h). There were 45 deaths and some 125 injuries. This crash is a major reason why most passenger trains in the United States have a speed limit of 79mph (127km/h).[citation needed]
The Advance Flyer and Exposition Flyer were diesel-powered high-speed inter-city passenger trains; the Exposition Flyer would be replaced by the famed California Zephyr within three years. Both trains were scheduled to leave Chicago'sUnion Station at 12:35 PM, the Advance Flyer took a two-minute lead as they both sped west. On the day of the wreck, the Advance Flyer had 2 EMD E7 units, 9920A and 9920B, with 8 head-end and 5 passenger cars. The Exposition Flyer had 2 EMD E5 units, 9910A and 9910B, with 9 passenger cars, four of which were sleepers. This was a short train for the run; normally 12 to 16 cars were needed.[2][3][4][5]
Setting
Naperville is a suburb in DuPage County, Illinois, 28 miles (45km) west of Union Station along the CB&Q's main line from Chicago to Aurora. This well-maintained three-track line, nicknamed "the Racetrack" by locals, had heavy traffic. The outside tracks typically had freight and local commuter trains running in one direction only on each. The center track, signaled in both directions, was used by intercity and express commuter passenger trains. The Flyers normally ran through Naperville on the center track at 80 miles per hour (130km/h).[6][7]
Wreck
Just after 1 p.m. on April 25, 1946, the rear brakeman signaled for the Advance Flyer to stop after he saw something fly out from under the train. It stopped at Loomis Street in Naperville, just beyond a gradual curve that trains came through at speed. A flagman had just started to back up the tracks when the Exposition Flyer loomed into view.[8][9]
According to engineer W. W. Blaine of the Exposition Flyer, he immediately applied brakes upon seeing Signal 227.1, showing Approach (yellow), but it was still too close to the first train to stop in time. The Exposition Flyer, slowing from 80mph (130km/h), was still traveling over 45mph (72km/h) when it struck the rear of the Advance Flyer.[9] Signal 227.1 was 6551 feet from the point of impact. Subsequent braking tests with a train composed of the same equipment showed that if the brakes were applied at Signal 227.1 with the train travelling at 81mph, the train should have stopped 395ft before the next signal (Signal 228.1) and 1,329 from the point of impact. Applying the brake in emergency at 86mph at the point that Signal 228.1 (at Stop and Proceed, protecting the stopped Advance Flyer) came into view resulted in a stop 393 feet beyond the point of impact. Tests on the components of the braking system of the wrecked train after the accident showed that they were operating normally.[5]
When the locomotive hit the last car (#13) of the Advance Flyer, a 68-seat heavyweight coach, the locomotive's front truck detached and the body plowed through three fourths of the length of the car, killing most of its passengers. The locomotive continued for a total of 205 feet (62m) beyond the point of impact. Car #12, a heavyweight observation car, remained intact and pushed forward into car #11, a lightweight diner. The only car on either train not built to the then-current strength standards, it collapsed into a U-shape, with multiple deaths. Lightweight 52-seat chair car #10 tipped on its side. #9 derailed and was leaning. None of the head-end cars derailed or were damaged. [10]
The Exposition Flyer's locomotives were badly damaged, the all-heavyweight train less so. Cars #1 to #5 all derailed, but the only damage was between cars #2 and #3; the front vestibule of #3 was collapsed about 6 feet (1.8m).[10]
Rescue
The Kroehler Furniture company was next to the crash scene; hundreds of employees rushed to help, and an aid station was set up in their warehouse. Fifty North Central College students and countless local residents also helped. Emergency workers came from as far as Hinsdale, more than 10 miles (16km) away. Most of the wounded were brought to hospitals in Aurora; bodies were taken to local funeral homes.[11] Engineer Blaine of the Exposition Flyer, who stayed at his station, climbed out of the wreckage and made his way unassisted to an aid station, despite a head wound and fractured skull. The fireman, who jumped before the impact, was the only person on the Exposition Flyer who died.[2][9]
The railroad sent a special relief train with doctors and nurses. By late night all injured and most bodies had been recovered. All three mainline tracks were blocked by wreckage. It was 27 hours before trains started to slowly move through the crash site and three days before all wreckage was cleared.[7]
Aftermath
There were four investigations of the wreck. In the first, a DuPage County Coroner's inquest recommended that manslaughter charges be filed against the engineer of the Exposition Flyer. He was charged but not taken into custody, as he was in the hospital at the time. He would not recover enough to be directly questioned in any of the investigations.[12]
The CB&Q's investigation started on April 28, three days after the wreck. Brake tests showed that the wreck could have been avoided, or less serious, if the engineer had followed the rules, but the overall objectivity of the investigation was questioned. DuPage County District Attorney Lee Daniels said the railroad was "rehearsing the evidence". It was suspended for the grand jury's investigation.[7][13]
An Interstate Commerce Commission report dated July 30, 1946, made recommendations that would affect railroads across the country. It also compared older heavyweight cars to newer lightweight ones (the Advance Flyer had a mixed consist).[14]
In October a DuPage County grand jury found that though the railroad and some employees were negligent, no single act caused the wreck. Rather, the accident resulted from a combination of many factors. No indictments were made, and charges against the Exposition Flyer's engineer were dropped.[15]
The engineer of the Exposition Flyer was the center of all the investigations. He said he was going too fast. The railroad said the signals were functioning correctly. Questions were raised about braking. The engineer said he had put the brakes in "emergency", and witnesses reported the wheels were sparking, but physical evidence did not support that and crewmembers felt that the train was only in "service" braking before the impact. [16]
There were questions about the conductor of the Advance Flyer stopping the train just beyond the curve, and whether the flagman did his job effectively.[7][17][18]
The railroad scheduling fast trains so close together was a problem, as was the mixing of lightweight and heavyweight cars, and the order of the cars.[17]
As for the equipment involved, the rear end passenger car was most likely scrapped, due to being split in half. Other damaged passenger cars were repaired, but heavy weight cars were no longer combined with light weight cars after the wreck. The two leading units of the Exposition Flyer, 9910A and 9910B, were badly damaged but not beyond repair; they did run into the end of the decade.[19] Neither unit survived the scrapper's torch after the CB&Q merged into the Burlington Northern in 1970. The leading units of the Advance Flyer were almost certainly scrapped as there is only one surviving E7 unit, which is an example from the Pennsylvania Railroad, not the CB&Q, and is the sole survivor of the EMD E7 series.
The Burlington increased headway on the two trains from 2 minutes to 15 minutes in May and added a signal aspect, flashing yellow (conditional approach), for a total of four aspects. They continued to haul mixed heavyweight/lightweight trains, but the railroad was already replacing heavyweight cars with stainless steel lightweight "Zephyr" type cars. All units in both trains would return to service except the Advance Flyer's last coach and the dining car; both were total losses.[25][26]
Following this disaster, advancements in train speed in the United States essentially halted.[21][22] However, select Amtrak passenger trains run at up to 150mph (240km/h) as of 2013.
In 2012 Chuck Spinner published The Tragedy at the Loomis Street Crossing. Because of the interest generated by the book, a Naperville committee selected Paul Kuhn to create a sculpture at the crash site. The sculpture, commemorating both the victims and the rescue workers involved in the tragic wreck, was dedicated in 2014. Kuhn's sculpture is made of 5,000 railroad spikes.[27]
Related Research Articles
The Pioneer Zephyr is a diesel-powered trainset built by the Budd Company in 1934 for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (CB&Q), commonly known as the Burlington Route. The trainset was the second internal combustion-powered streamliner built for mainline service in the United States, the first such train powered by a diesel engine, and the first to enter revenue service.
The Denver Zephyr was a streamlined passenger train operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad between Chicago, Illinois, and Denver, Colorado. In peak years it ran to Colorado Springs. It operated from 1936 to 1973. The Denver Zephyr continued operating after the Burlington Northern Railroad merger in 1970. BN conveyed the train to Amtrak in 1971; Amtrak merged it with the Denver–Oakland City of San Francisco to form the San Francisco Zephyr and dropped the "Denver" name in 1973.
The Ak-Sar-Ben Zephyr was a streamlined passenger train operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) between Lincoln, Nebraska and Chicago, Illinois, United States. The first version operated from 1940 to 1947; a revived service operated from 1953 to 1970. The "Ak-Sar-Ben" portion of name was created by spelling Nebraska (Neb-ras-ka) backwards and taken from a fraternal organization of the same name. "Zephyr" was a name applied by the CB&Q to many of its trains, beginning with the Pioneer Zephyr in 1934. The name derived from "Zephyrus", the Greek god of the west wind.
On January 4, 1987, two trains collided on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor main line near Chase, Maryland, United States, at Gunpow Interlocking. Amtrak train 94, the Colonial, traveling north from Washington, D.C., to Boston, crashed at over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) into a set of Conrail locomotives running light which had fouled the mainline. Fourteen passengers on the Amtrak train died, as well as the Amtrak engineer and lounge car attendant.
The 400 was a named passenger train operated by the Chicago and North Western Railway between Chicago and Saint Paul, with a final stop in Minneapolis. The train took its name from the schedule of 400 miles between the cities in 400 minutes, and was also a nod to "The Four Hundred Club", a term coined by Ward McAllister to refer to the social elite of New York City in the late 19th century. It was an express train with limited stops between Chicago and the Twin Cities. The "400" ran from 1935 to 1963 on the Chicago to Twin Cities route. The C&NW later named their other passenger trains using the number "400".
The Twin Zephyrs, also known as the Twin Cities Zephyrs, were a pair of streamlined passenger trains on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q), running between Chicago and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota. It was the second Zephyr service introduced by CB&Q after the record-setting Denver–Chicago "dawn to dusk dash" of the Pioneer Zephyr trainset.
Naperville is a train station in Naperville, Illinois, served by Amtrak, the national railroad passenger system. Amtrak trains stopping at the Naperville station include the California Zephyr, Illinois Zephyr, Carl Sandburg and Southwest Chief. It is also one of two stations in Naperville that serves Metra's BNSF commuter line, and an abundance of Pace bus routes. Naperville station was originally built in 1910 by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. On April 26, 1946, the station was the site of a collision between the CB&Q's Exposition Flyer and Advance Flyer. On April 26, 2014, a memorial entitled Tragedy to Triumph was dedicated at the train station. The sculpture by Paul Kuhn is dedicated not only to the crash victims but also to the rescuers at the site.
The Kew Gardens train crash was a collision between two trains on the Long Island Rail Road's Main Line, which occurred during the evening rush hour of November 22, 1950. The trains collided between Kew Gardens and Jamaica stations in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York City, killing 78 people and injuring 363. The crash is the worst railway accident in LIRR history, and one of the worst in the history of New York State.
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.
The Bagley train wreck occurred in Utah, United States, on the morning of Sunday December 31, 1944. The crash killed 50, including over 35 military personnel, and injured 81.
The Downers Grove train wreck happened on April 3, 1947, at the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad station in Downers Grove, Illinois. The Twin Cities Zephyr, a high-speed inter-city passenger train, struck a tractor that had fallen from a freight train only seconds before. Three died and over thirty were injured in the wreck.
The Indianola Train Wreck was a railway accident that occurred at 7:08 a.m. on May 29, 1911, on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad one half mile west of Indianola, Nebraska leaving 18 dead and 32 injured.
The Exposition Flyer was a passenger train jointly operated by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q), Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW), and Western Pacific (WP) railroads between Chicago and Oakland, California, for a decade between 1939 and 1949, before being replaced by the famed California Zephyr.
The intermittent inductive automatic train stop is a train protection system used in North American mainline railroad and rapid transit systems. It makes use of magnetic reluctance to trigger a passing train to take some sort of action. The system was developed in the 1920s by the General Railway Signal Company as an improvement on existing mechanical train stop systems and saw limited adoption before being overtaken by more advanced cab signaling and automatic train control systems. The system remains in use after having been introduced in the 1920s.
References
↑ Passenger Train Consists of the 1940s. Wayner Publications. p.35.
1 2 "Interstate Commerce Commission, Report of the Accident Investigation Occuring [sic] on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, Naperville, Il". 1946-04-25. doi:10.21949/1509122.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
