FATAL WRECK ON THE NEW HAVEN

Passengers Burned to Death When Boston Express Took Crossover at High Speed

ENGINE BOILER EXPLODED

Engineer of Express from Boston Takes a Crossover Near Station at Westport, Conn., at Fifty Miles an Hour, When Company's Rules Called for Fifteen Miles, and the Locomotive, Leaping the Rails, Ploughs Along 200 Feet and Overturns – The Boiler Explodes and Wrecked Cars Behind Are Filled with Scalding Steam – Two Daughters and a Daughter-In-Law of ANTHONY N. BRADY Are Among the Dead.

South Norwalk, Conn. -- Twelve persons are known to have been burned or crushed to death, three others were reported missing by relatives and fifty others injured, some of them mortally, when the engineer of a New York, New Haven and Hartford express train which left Boston at noon attempted to take a cross-over 200 feet west of the Westport-Saugatuck station at fifty miles an hour, disregarding two signals.
The road rules provide that such cross-overs shall not be taken at a greater speed than fifteen miles an hour. In an official statement issued by the railroad company it is said that one of the road's oldest engineers was at the throttle of the locomotive.
Among those killed, were two daughters of ANTHONY N. BRADY, the Gas and Traction multi-millionaire; one of his daughters-in-law and two sisters of his daughter-in-law. His son, JAMES C. BRADY, on learning of the death of his wife, his own two sisters and her two sisters became frantic with grief and was taken to Norwalk Hospital.
The BRADYS and their connections had been to Hartford to attend the funeral of Patrick Garvan, father of Francis C. Garvan, former assistant district attorney of New York, and were returning to New York City.
ANTHONY N. BRADY also was told that two of his grandchildren, the son and daughter of JAMES C. BRADY, were dead. This was a mistake.
The locomotive was drawing a baggage car, mail car, four Pullman coaches, three day coaches and a smoker. The locomotive leaped from the rails, ploughed through a ditch for a distance of 200 or more feet and toppled over. Then its boiler exploded.
So great was the speed and so heavy the train that the baggage car broke its front and rear couplings and literally jumped over the overturned locomotive. A baggage man and newsboy in this car had amazing escapes from death. The mail car shot ahead of the locomotive, but the first parlor car partly overturned, jammed into the fire box. Instantly the Pintsch gas tank exploded and the car was in flames from end to end.
Many passengers in this car were pinned down, but were conscious and screaming for help.
The Dead.
BRADY, MRS. JAMES C., Albany, N. Y., daughter-in-law of ANTHONY N. BRADY.
RANSOM, MRS. C. S., a sister of MRS. BRADY.
CLARK, GEORGE L., engineer of the train.
CLARK, MRS., his wife, who was a passenger on the train.
GAVIT, MRS. E. P., daughter of ANTHONY N. BRADY.
HAMILTON, MISS MARY C., sister of MRS. JAMES C. BRADY.
MOKER, J. J., fireman of train.
TUCKER, MRS. CARL, also daughter of ANTHONY N. BRADY.
WHEELER, MARK A., Stockbridge, Mass., mail clerk.
Four unidentified bodies, two of them children.
According to New Haven officials, the engineer, who is described as being one of the oldest and most reliable in the service of the road, ignored danger signals. He is dead.
The crossing was made necessary to avoid a freight train which was traveling at decreased speed further down the line.
It is known that the train was seven minutes late. It was being run at a speed greatly in excess of the rule laid down by the Coroner a year ago, when a similar accident occurred at the Fairfield Viaduct, but six miles distant from the scene of this disaster. That accident was due to the same causes which brought about this tragedy. At that time the coroner declared that fifteen miles an hour was the maximum speed which should be attained in making such a crossing.
Extraordinary scenes attended the disaster. The locomotive turned a complete somersault. The baggage car immediately behind it was catapulted over the top of the engine, and landed twenty feet in front.
An automobile standing near the track at the time of the explosion was overturned by the concussion and its occupants were thrown out. Trees were uprooted, chickens beheaded.
Agonizing scenes followed. Men with their clothing aflame battled to wrench women free who were pinned down in the burning wreckage. Crowds of rescuers stood by helpless to aid victims who could plainly be seen in the flaming cars.
The rescuers were plentiful, for in the rear coaches the passengers, though shaken by the shock of riding over the ties, were unhurt. But their task seemed impossible of completion when they first rushed doorward. Neither engine nor cars were visible for the steam and smoke and flames which swept over them.
From this burning tangle of wreckage rang out shriek after shriek, and screams and prayers and curses, for men and women and children were crazed by their danger. Pinned in parts of the overturned cars, they could see the fire eating steadily nearer to them and yet each was helpless.
Fought to Reach Loved Ones.
From the throng on the tracks outside rose cries too – the cries of women who had left their children in the wreck, of men who had been separated from their wives when in the first crash some few were thrown clear of the wreckage or had clambered out before the wreck took fire.
Men who an instant before had been seated with their families in the Pullmans tried to dash back into the wreck, screaming the names of their loved ones and fighting with those who sought to restrain them. Women sank beside the tracks with hands clasped in prayer.
Men wrapped handkerchiefs over their mouths and with arms raised to shield their faces from the intense heat, crept along inch by inch to the wreck, sometimes finding a window, which they would beat in with their fists, some of them creeping to the door at the rear of the first coach.
The flames were eating a rapid path from the forward end of the first car toward the rear and threatening to gain a hold on the second Pullman. The clothing of the rescuers was singed when they reached the first Pullman. They could hold their positions but an instant at a time; but time and again they returned to the wreck – creeping forward this time and succeeding only in smashing a window, then creeping forward again in the hope of dragging some one through that window.
First Pullman a Pyre.
From the second Pullman, overturned like the first, but not yet on fire, the most of the injured were drawn. From the blazing car one or two persons were hauled, their clothing on fire, almost overcome by the heat and the smoke they had inhaled, but they were few in number. The first Pullman became a pyre in which all of the dead, except the engineer, the fireman, J. J. MOKER, and the mail clerk, MARK A. WHEELER, were incinerated.
CLARK, the engineer, was killed in his engine, as was MOKER. WHEELER, who died after being removed to the Norwalk Hospital, was caught and crushed between the five Pullmans and the mail car.
But the others were burned to death. Three women who were in the party of JAMES C. BRADY were taken out, blackened and charred almost beyond recognition. Two other women, their clothing burned from their bodies, were dragged out when the fire had subsided somewhat, and a little girl was burned so as to be unrecognizable.
As the dead and injured were taken from the wreck they were laid in rows along the railroad embankment, which at this point if twenty feet above the surrounding ground. The first messages which were sent out of Westport were for firemen, doctors and ambulances, and within thirty-five minutes the South Norwalk fire department were at the scene, the firemen training several lines of hose on the blazing cars.
The motor ambulance of the Bridgeport Hospital, nine miles away, made the run in less than thirty-five minutes, and from every nearby town, physicians came in carriages and automobiles. Darkness fell over the wreck while the surgeons and physicians and firemen still worked about the overturned cars.

The Cranbury Press New Jersey 1912-10-11
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!