The Ashtabula Disaster

by Stephen D. Peet

The bridge broke in the centre. The engineer of the Socrates suddenly heard a sharp crack, like the report of a torpedo, and looked out and saw the engine behind sinking. With great presence of mind he opened the throttle valve an instant, and putting on all steam drove his engine forward. It was “like going up hill,” but the Socrates reached the abutment and was safe. The Columbia, as it was drawn forward struck the abutment, and for an instant clung to its leader, held by the coupling rod, but as that broke, it fell. The first express car struck forward and downward, and landed at the foot of the abutment, while the locomotive fell on to it, completely reversed, with its headlight towards the train which it had been drawing. The other express and two baggage cars also fell to the side of the bridge, forming a line across the chasm with the rear baggage against the east abutment. The heavy iron bridge fell in the same instant with an awful crash, to the north, and lay, a great wall of iron rods and braces, ten feet high across the gorge. Singularly enough the track and top of the bridge remained long enough in situ for the bridge to sink and sway away beneath, and then fell straight down and lay at the bottom of the stream immediately below where it rested before, but 76 feet down, in the midst of the ice and the snow and water of the stream. Upon this the first passenger coach landed in an upright position in the middle of the stream and to the left, but close by the wreck of the bridge.

The second passenger coach followed, but struck around at an angle, and turning on to its side fell among the rods and braces, and was crushed and broken in the fall. The smoker broke its couplings at both ends, struck across and through the second passenger car, smashing it in its course, and then fell upon the top of the first, crushing it down and killing many as it fell. The palace cars followed, but as they fell they leaped clear of the abutment and flew out into the air to the left of the bridge with their trucks hurled beneath them, and dropped 76 feet down and 80 feet out, and landed in the centre of the chasm.

The first drawing-room car “Yokahama” landed on the ice, and the sleeper “Palatine” beside it to the right. The sleeper “City of Buffalo,” however, as it flew through the air struck across the two, knocking the “Yokahama” on its side and crushing it in through its whole length, and landed on its forward end, with its rear end resting on the other two and high in air.

As the different cars fell, every person for the instant was stunned, and the crashing of one car on another struck many dead in an instant, while the survivors waited in suspense, expecting death would also come to them at the next blow.

The work of death was owing mostly to the fall, and to the crashing of cars and heavy trucks on bodies and limbs, and even the very hearts of many.

It was probably instantaneous to the large majority of those who perished. But a few were taken out of the wreck with any evidence of having perished from the flames which soon broke out. The wonder was that any escaped to tell the manner of their escape.

As the cars struck, splinters flew in every direction. The floor burst up from below. The seats were crushed in front and behind. The roofs were crushed from above. The sides opened and yawned, and, as one expressed it, it seemed as if every limb and sense were being scattered and only the soul was left in its solitariness.

More than one imagined that he was the only survivor, that all the rest had perished in an instant. Many thought their time had come. The thought of fire also arose in many minds, and the fear of a death that might be more dreadful than that by the crash.

Without, the wreck was strewn among the iron beams and columns of the broken bridge and scattered in terrible confusion.

Ice and water and snow were mingled with rods of iron, and heavy braces, and beams, and the debris of cars, and the bodies of men.