On the evening of January 13, 1882, a southbound New York Central passenger train crashed into the rear of another one stopped on the tracks along Spuyten Duyvil Creek in the similarly named neighborhood of the New York City borough of The Bronx. Eight people were killed, and 19 seriously injured, by the crash and fires afterwards, fires that neighborhood residents and crew extinguished by rolling large snowballs into them until local firefighters arrived. Among the dead was State Senator Webster Wagner, inventor of the sleeping cars used on the train, between two of which he was crushed to death, and a newlywed couple who died together after the bride refused to leave her trapped husband. It was the deadliest rail accident in New York City at that time, remaining so for another 20 years.
The stopped train was an express from Chicago carrying at least 500, including other state legislators who had boarded at Albany that afternoon to return to their districts in the city for the weekend. While accounts of the accident initially reported that the express was stopped due to a failed brake, it was later revealed that a drunken legislator (never identified) decided to pull the emergency brake. A coroner's jury later blamed the crash primarily on the express train's conductor and rear brakeman. Both were indicted and charged with manslaughter; the brakeman, who testified that he was illiterate and could not read the company rulebook, was later acquitted.
The wreck led the railroad to discontinue the use of mineral oil to light cars at night. While the railroad had long before switched from stoves as heat for car interiors to the hot water-based Baker process, that had not yet been perfected and was believed to have contributed to the fires after the crash. Innovations in train heating system design accelerated afterwards.
Trains
The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad's Atlantic Express, originating in Chicago, arrived at Albany's Union Station already 23 minutes late due to snowy weather on the afternoon of January 13, 1882. It would be delayed further as so many tickets had been sold as to require 15 additional cars added to the train, and a second steam locomotive, so the train could make up the lost time. When it left at 3:06 p.m. it was running 26 minutes behind schedule. Its consist was, after the locomotives and added cars, two mail cars, a baggage car, four coaches and five luxury sleeper cars. Just across the Hudson River, at Greenbush (today Rensselaer), a sixth sleeper was coupled to the rear of the train, the Idlewild, the personal car of Republican state Senator Webster Wagner.
Among the approximately 500 passengers were other state legislators, from both houses and both parties (with most Democrats part of New York City's Tammany Hall political machine), returning to their homes downstate for the weekend with the legislature having adjourned. They were traveling on free passes issued them by the railroad, which sought their continued goodwill. Also aboard were John M. Toucey, superintendent for the line between New York and Buffalo, and Charles Bissell, superintendent for the division between Albany and New York. The legislators were mostly grouped together in the first four cars, where with freely available liquor the trip down the Hudson Valley soon took on a festive atmosphere.
Wagner was the subject of particular interest to the reporters accompanying the politicians. He had founded the Wagner Palace Drawing-Car Company, which had built the sleepers on the rear of the train, all of which had cost the railroad $17,000 ($ in ). There was speculation that Wagner and the Pullman Company, its bitter rival, were about to conclude a merger that would create a $12.5 million ($ in ) company that would effectively monopolize the sleeping-car market and make Wagner and other shareholders wealthier than they already were. Asked repeatedly about the rumored deal, Wagner demurred, preferring to recount for the journalists gathered around him his story of how he had built the company over the preceding three decades from his home in Palatine Bridge, west of Albany in the Mohawk Valley, after seeing how the railroad needlessly lost business to river ferries with sleeping quarters.
By 6:15 p.m. the express, stopping only at Hudson and Poughkeepsie, had made up much of the time it had lost before and at Albany. As it passed through Tarrytown, a waiting local, also bound for Grand Central Depot in Midtown Manhattan, had to delay its own scheduled departure five minutes to allow the express to clear the station. The local's engineer, Frank Burr, and fireman Patrick Quinn, recalled that the express was traveling fast. They left the station at 6:40.
The local made its stops along the Hudson south of Tarrytown, reaching Spuyten Duyvil, away, where the line turns southeast to follow the creek of that name. It stopped there at 7:04 p.m. Burr believed at this time that there was 13 minutes of headroom between his train and the Atlantic Express.
But the express had stopped on the tracks less than a mile to the east. George Hanford, its conductor, said one of the inebriated legislators pulled the emergency brake, stopping the train as it rounded another bend that took it along the banks of the creek towards Tibbetts Brook, apparently because he thought it would be funny. Between the train's location and the Spuyten Duyvil station the tracks ran through Rolling Mill Cut, which obstructed the view of the track beyond in either direction, a stretch Hanford considered particularly dangerous since the curve at the north end of the cut was further obstructed by Kilcullen's, a local hotel and tavern. The railroad had long had flagmen at both ends of the cut for safety reasons, but had recently laid off the one who watched the south end, closer to where the train was stopped, in order to economize. The flagman at the other end did not know there was a stopped train beyond the far end of the cut.
Collision
At the time the express stopped, Wagner was in the Empire, the sleeper car in front of the last car, talking with some other legislators. After the stop, he excused himself to take a look around the train, saying "These confounded railroads have a passion for smashing up my best cars" before he went into the Idlewild. It was the last thing anyone remembered him saying.
Up front, engineer Edward Stanford attempted to restart the train. He was briefly successful, but only mustered enough power to break the drawbar connecting the two locomotives. His second engineer tried to recharge the brake. The of pressure the air cylinder had had going into the turn out of the cut had dropped to 40 () after the brake had been pulled; he had tried to pump them off. Recharging the cylinder would take at least 15 minutes.
At the rear, Melius, the brakeman, left the train with a red and white lantern to warn any oncoming trains to stop. He began walking down the track toward the cut and the Spuyten Duyvil station. How long after the stop he left the vicinity of the train, and how far he went were later matters of dispute. By Melius's account he was six or seven car lengths from the train when he saw the headlight and heard the whistle of the oncoming local train's locomotive. He began frantically waving his red lantern across the track.
Burr saw the lantern and immediately applied his brake. He saw the rear of the express, and knew there was not enough time or space to stop the local. At 7:12 p.m. its locomotive collided with the Idlewild, embedding itself about 12 feet (4 m) and making the car telescope into the one ahead, making a sound audible within a half-mile (800 m) radius. When it finally stopped, Burr, uninjured, got out and began assisting with rescue efforts.
Rescue efforts
Since it was a Friday night, Kilcullen's tavern was busy; many of those present were workers at a nearby foundry. Some patrons outside in the mild weather for that time of year (around ) had witnessed the crash, and they brought others from the bar and the neighborhood to offer aid and rescue victims, with the help of crew and unhurt or minimally injured survivors. James Kilcullen himself offered the train crew the use of the shutters from his building as stretchers.
Burr saw that the locomotive's boiler was damaged and might explode. He took the shovel from his fireman and began shoveling snow into the furnace to douse the fire. Rescuers who had carried water to the wreck from the nearby creek in order to put out the blaze consuming the wrecked sleepers likewise, realizing the more imminent danger, followed Burr's lead and began throwing it on the outside of the boiler. Soon the fire in the firebox was extinguished, and the rescuers' attention turned to the fire in the sleepers, from which screams of those trapped within could be heard.
Although he had been severely burned on his face and arms in the collision, Hanford took charge. Noticing that there was little water left and that what water was being thrown on the flames was having no effect, he shouted for the rescuers to throw snow on the fire instead. He began to roll a huge ball of snow from the ground toward the wreck, and others followed his lead. As they began throwing their large snowballs on the burning sleepers, other rescuers began extricating the dead and injured. They, too, had snow and water thrown on them to offset the heat so they could get the victims out. Within a short time all the snow had been scraped from the ground around the crashed cars.
The local's locomotive's headlight remained lit, which along with the continued illumination in the front of the Empire allowed the removal of all present there before the car was completely engulfed in flames. Some died shortly afterwards. Rescuers used axes to break open the cars. Assemblyman J.W. Monk was psychologically overcome after being extricated from the ceiling timbers he had been trapped in. Inside the car, as the fire grew worse, Hanford attempted to rescue a young newlywed, Mary Louise Valentine (née Gaylord). Her husband, whom she had married the night before in Massachusetts, was still alive as well but so trapped in the wreckage as to make rescue impossible in what time was left. By contrast, only some of her clothing was caught, but she refused Hanford's entreaties to remove it and escape, and he did not have the time to force her to since it was so hot.
Wagner's body was found crushed between the two cars. Like many of the dead, it was burnt beyond recognition. He was identified by a gold watch with the initials "W.W.", his diary and several slips of paper with the election returns from his state senate district. Another victim was alive when removed from the train, but so seriously injured that they died shortly afterwards. Firefighters soon arrived with a pumper to put out the fire, and the injured were taken to Bellevue Hospital after being laid out on billiards tables at Kilcullen's along with the dead; two rival undertakers from Yonkers fought over who should take the bodies. Hundreds of people came to look at the site, Bissell and Toucey stayed on scene to oversee the cleanup, and by 4 a.m. the track was reopened.
Estimates of the fatalities that night were initially as high as nine; later accounts put it at seven or eight. Three passengers were unaccounted for. A surviving woman was injured seriously enough to make doctors doubt she could be saved, until her condition began to improve the following day. Another 17 passengers suffered minor injuries, including Brooklyn state senator John C. Jacobs. Two days after the accident, the number of unaccounted for was reduced by two Assemblymen: Jaques J. Stillwell and Albert M. Patterson. The former was reported to be safe at his home in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Gravesend, and the latter at his home in the upstate town of Geneva, having never boarded the train in the first place.