New Market Railway Accident

Accident site

The New Market railroad accident was a head-on collision between two trains on the Southern Railway near New Market , Tennessee , due to disregard of a written driving order on September 24, 1904 , resulting in at least 56 deaths and 106 injuries.

Starting position

The two moves involved were:

• No. 15, a local passenger train that was traveling west from Bristol to Knoxville with 140  passengers . The train consisted of a locomotive , a tender and three cars .
• No. 12, the Carolina Special , from Chattanooga to Salisbury , North Carolina , which had about 210 passengers on board. Many of them came from the World's Fair in St. Louis . It consisted of a locomotive , a tender , two mail cars , three wooden passenger carriages and finally four steel Pullman cars .

The two trains were traveling on a single-track route . Roadmap default, the local train would have the express train on a siding called Hodges' Switch cross must leave. But since he was delayed, he received a written order in Morristown that the train crossing should take place that day in a passing point behind New Market station . Both the engine driver and the train driver countersigned the driving order, but the latter later claimed to have misunderstood it. The train then stopped at New Market station as scheduled . Then he did not go further, but in the few hundred meters behind the station located turnout , but passed it on the free track.

The Carolina Special stopped on schedule in Strawberry Plains . As the train departed from Strawberry Plains station, there was a telegraphic message from New Market station that train number 15 had not gone into the siding, but into the open. The station staff tried to stop the train by waving and throwing stones at the train, but in vain. The train crew no longer noticed. As a last resort, Strawberry Plains station tried to reach the Hodges' Switch alternative, located between it and New Market station , but this was also in vain, as it was not staffed at the time.

collision

The Carolina Special accelerated to around 95 km / h, the local train tried to reduce its delay and drove around 110 km / h. The trains met at 10.18 a.m., the collision could be heard within a radius of 20 kilometers. The locomotive and tender of the local train were thrown into the air, flew over the locomotive, the tender and the two mail cars and landed on the three wooden passenger carriages, which they completely smashed. At the same time, the four steel Pullman wagons pushed into the wooden wagons with high kinetic energy and contributed to the complete destruction of these vehicles . Most of the passengers died in the wooden wagons. The steel Pullman cars themselves remained relatively undamaged.

The number of deaths varies between 56 and 113, depending on the source, and that of the injured between 106 and 125.

consequences

When news of the disaster arrived, was from Knoxville an emergency train sent to doctors and medical supplies to the scene and the injured in the Knoxville General Hospital to bring.

The subsequent investigation could not clarify why the engine driver who died in the accident disregarded the written driving order.

See also

• List of rail accidents in the United States

literature

• Edgar A. Haine: Railroad Wrecks . 1994.
• Linda Houston: Hodges, TN New Market Train Wreck, Sept 1904 .

Web links

• Photographs from the scene of the accident .
• Disaster Management at the 1904 New Market, Tennessee Train Wreck: Role of a Surgeon .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Disaster Management .
2. ↑ History of the New Market Train Wreck ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  

Coordinates: 36 ° 4 ′ 45.7 "  N , 83 ° 37 ′ 47.3"  W.