The trains which were in collision were from Manhattan and Rockaway Beaches, respectively, and the point where they came together is the little straggling village of Berlin, about two and a half miles from this city.

The accident occurred at a narrow road which runs down a grassy slope, crosses the track at a grade, and becomes a tortuous rocky lane. On one side of the track the ground is quite high and where land for the railroad was reclaimed from the fields is a rocky, uneven bank about five feet in height.

This section of the road is between two block-signal system semaphores, and is characterized by a double curve.

Just beside the tracks at this point is Haberman’s agateware manufactory, facing the center of a double curve of the tracks. Before coming to this point trains from Long Island City come around a long curve. Then there is a stretch of straight track up to a point where is stationed the signal pole operated from the tower on the hillside, and beyond is the big curve around which came the Rockaway flier on it’s headlong mission of death.

The Rockaway train was a regular train, and left the beach at 11 o’clock. It was made up of five passenger cars.

The Manhattan train had six passenger cars. It was an extra train run to accommodate the audience at Sousa’s concert at the beach.

It left Manhattan Beach at 11:10, behind time, because it was following the regular train, which had been delayed nearly twenty minutes. Had this not been the case, there would have been no story of death and suffering at Berlin.

At 11:42 the Manhattan train came around the curve toward the signal pole. On board it were nearly 200 people. The red lantern of danger burned behind the signal glass, and the engineer of the Manhattan train came to a full stop near the lane beside Haberman’s factory.

The Manhattan train was stopped on this block because only a short distance ahead was the regular train. In a few minutes ROBERT J. KNOTT, in charge of the signal and switch tower, signaled the Manhattan extra that everything was clear, and the train at once started.

It had scarcely acquired the ordinary speed of a man running when the Rockaway train came thundering around the curve behind.

There was a shriek of whistles for a second, then a fearful crash, followed by the loud reports of cracking timbers as the great iron mass of the engine plowed and ground and crunched its way through the rear cars of the Manhattan train, crushing or killing the hapless passengers.

Just as the crash came the coupling pin between the fourth and fifth cars of the Manhattan train parted, and off into the fog, which hung low and heavy, went the rest of the train toward Long Island City.

Clear through the last car of the Manhattan train plowed the engine, seeming to hiss out a cry of scoffing and hissing in answer to the shrieks and moans of the passengers being crushed to death by it.

It was in this car which was cloven clear in two, that most of the deaths were caused.

The second car was tossed like a feather from the track and pitched on its side in the ditch.

There are few houses near the scene of the wreck, and in the terrible moments that followed the crash little help was at hand. Those who were uninjured did the best they could for the sufferers pinioned beneath the great piles of debris. From the near-by houses, whose occupant shad been awakened by the noise of the collision, people came to the rescue.

Watchman HUGH O’NEIL opened the doors of Haberman’s factory to the injured, and while some helped to bring them to this shelter others hastened away to get physicians.

One glance at the scene, dimly lighted though it was with oil lamps that flickered feebly in the thick haze, sufficed to show how terrible had been the work of destruction.

Forward of the Rockaway the engine the tracks were blocked with four distinct piles of broken timbers, the remnants of the last two cars of the Manhattan Beach train, which had been sliced clean in halves.

The doer of all the damage, the Rockaway engine, had come off hardly better than the cars it had ground to pieces. It stood with a driving wheel wrenched off and axles bent into a semicircle, canted off the track, a shapeless and distorted monster of twisted, bent and broken iron and steel. The tail end of the boiler had been broken through, and the empty cylinder was crammed, as a glass is crammed with toothpicks, with the spikes and large slivers of the timbers against which it had crashed.

But the shattered cars and ruined engine formed but the smallest item in that ghastly nocturne. One could hardly walk twenty feet near the tracks without stumbling in the dark over a body of a victim of the disaster either dead or almost dying.

Long rows of the wounded were propped up against the walls of Haberman’s factory to await the arrival of a special train bearing Dr. VALENTINE, surgeon of the road, and Drs. KENNEDY, HICKSON and MCKEON to administer the temporal wants of the wounded, and Fathers MAGUIRE and DOHERTY to see after their spiritual needs.

The bodies of the dead were carried, under the supervision of the coroner, into the factory.

One man was still breathing when carried in. He summoned up enough strength to utter, “Jesus, pity me, Jesus, save me!” when the death struggle came.

Letters in this man’s pockets mailed to the two addresses, 51 West Fifty-Fifth Street and 29 West Twenty-Third Street, went to identify him as ALEXANDER GRILLET.

A little silver medal, the prize for scholarship in a Hebrew Sabbath School, helped to identify as SIDNEY WEINSTEIN, a little lad of twelve or so mangled as to be utterly unrecognizable.

Dr. VALENTINE himself identified among those breathing their last Col. ELISHA A. BUCK of 30 West Fifty-first Street, new York, editor of the Spirit of the Times. Col. BUCK had been to the races with is son Harry, who was himself seriously injured, and Dr. GIDEON KNAPP, the expert pigeon shot. Dr. KNAPP proved his famous quickness of eye and steadiness of nerve by not only jumping out of danger himself when the crash came, but also by rescuing the unconscious HARRY BUCK.

It was by the race-track badge made out in his name that Dr. VALENTINE identified Col. BUCK, who died almost in his arms.

Shortly after 3 o’clock Engine No. 94, drawing train No. 21 of the New York and Rockaway Beach Division, pulled up by the tin factory. It was the relief train, and in its one car seventeen of those whose injuries seemed the most serious were placed under the care of Dr. VALENTINE and Dr. BURKE, of 117 Manhattan Avenue, Greenpoint.

Before the engineer of the relief train had even put his hand to the lever to start back to this city, two of the sufferers, both women, expired.

Coroner BRANDON asked that the two bodies be immediately turned over to him, but Dr. VALENTINE, saying that he could take no chances of delay with the sufferers, ordered the engineer to proceed. Even with all his haste another patient, a man, died before this city was reached.

The relief train steamed slowly, as if careful not to jolt its suffering burden, into the station at 3:50.

Few who looked into that solitary car, freighted with human woe, will ever forget the sight.

At one end of the car, with cloths over their faces, were the bodies of the three who had died during transit, each lying in a pool of congealed blood. On the cross seats, n the side seats and even on the floor, which was soaked with blood, lay and groaned fourteen unfortunates, to each whom in turn the priests would murmur a word of consolation, while the tow doctors, with shirt sleeves rolled up, worked their hardest.

A group of dead lying in that part of a battlefield where the shot and the shell fell the thickest could not afford a more heartrending diversity of wounds, lacerations, and mutilations than did the group in the relief train.

One by one the injured were transferred to Long Island Express wagons well filled with straw, in which they were taken to the St. John’s Hospital.

The electric lights in the station went out and the darkness was lighted only by red and green lanterns that bobbed and swung round the stretchers.

The sight of the first man brought from the car more than satisfied the morbid crowd that had gathered to feast their eyesight on bruises and blood-a mere trunk of a man, with both legs off at the thigh. No wonder the throng gave the poor fellow a wide passage. He was, THOMAS FINN, the brakeman of the Manhattan train. He lived just long enough to die in a bed in the hospital instead of bleeding to death on the straw in an express wagon.

Another sad case was that of a fine, stalwart young fellow, with fair curly hair, one of whose bright blue eyes were knocked out, while his knees were mashed into a pulp.

One of the last to be removed was young HARRY BUCK, who, half unconsciously, kept repeating in a monotone: “Where’s our boat? Where’s our boat?”

He was soon revived and was whisked off in a carriage by Dr. GIDEON KNAPP before he could have time to learn of his father’s awful death.

After a short discussion with Police Justice KAVANAGH of this city as to the disposition of the dead, Dr. VALENTINE returned with the bodies to Skelton’s morgue.

Hardly a passenger on either train escaped without injury of some kind. Some were merely scratched, while others were bruised and cut.

The scenes about the ferry houses were strange as the stragglers came in from the disaster which had been so nearly fatal to them. Most of them wore bandages of some kind, and all were in a terrible state of mental excitement. They were anxious only to get home, and had neither time nor inclination to say anything about their harrowing adventure.

The New York Times, New York, NY 28 Aug 1893