There is a deep sink on the parade-ground of the Military Academy at West Point that is a monument to the nastiest railroad wreck from the point of view of time, that the Eastern railroaders have ever known. Just under that parade-ground the West Shore Railroad passes through a long tunnel. On an October night more than twenty years ago, the Chicago & St. Louis Express of that railroad was slowly poking through that bore, when a portion of the roof of the tunnel collapsed. It buried itself between the rear part of the baggage-car and the forward part of the express-car and the train came to an abrupt stop.
Engineer William Morse saw in an instant the damage that had been done. He cut loose from that penned baggage-car and made record speed up the line to Cornwall, the nearest station. From there he a sent a wire post-haste to the despatcher up at Kingston, then the headquarters of the line.
“Train caught by collapse of West Point tunnel,” that despatch read in part. “Only engineer and fireman escaped.”
They began to get their hospital train ready at Kingston, notified Newburg to get all the doctors in sight and hurry them on a special to West Point. The chief despatcher went through the worst quarter of an hour of his life. He began to call Weehawken, the southern terminal of the line. Weehawken wires were all busy, and he could not cut in there.
Weehawken wires were getting reports from Conductor Sam Brown of the Chicago & St. Louis Express, who had come running out of the tunnel to the West Point depot.
“Wire headquarters,” he shouted to the agent, “that we’ve run into an avalanche. Morse and his fireman are crushed under the tunnel roof.”
And they began to get the wreckers busy down at Weehawken.
When the chief despatcher up at Kingston finally got Weehawken, they told him about Sam Morse’s fate. The truth of the thing came to him in an instant. He laughed hysterically, and his assistant jumped up. The despatcher’s bad quarter of an hour was over. He jumped to his telephone, caught the yardmaster with it.
“We won’t need that hospital train,” he said. “There isn’t a soul hurt.”
And there was not. But there remained the worst railroad block on record. It was three months before they pulled the baggage-car out of that tunnel, and then they had to use dynamite. After that it was found necessary to line the entire bore with solid masonry. That was an accident that might not have been so lucky on repetition.