Early Wreck on the Madison Hill

During the years from 1841 when the Madison incline plane opened for business until 1847 when the first rack and pinion locomotive M. G. Bright entered service, there were several train accidents on the incline plane.

One of them on March 28, 1844, was described by the Madison Banner:

On Thursday evening last, about 4:00 pm, a collision of the passenger and wood cars took place on the incline plane, when they were about half-way down the descent, by which the former car was stove to pieces, two persons instantly killed, a third so horribly mangled that he died in a few hours, a fourth killed instantaneously by jumping from the car before the final crush, and some ten or twelve, more or less dangerously wounded.

John Lodge, conductor of the train, in his report of the wreck added these details:

It has been the practice … to bring into the city [of Madison] one wood car every day. The wood cars are large, fixed on eight wheels, having generally, five or six cords of wood upon them. … [However,] yesterday … the passenger car (in which I and the passengers were stationed) [began its movement down the plane and] contrary to [my order, the wood car] was started, when we had proceeded not more than two or three hundred yards … Immediately after the wood car was started on yesterday, I discovered that it was gaining upon us with very great velocity … we were struck a little below the centre of Hendricks’ embankment. … The first effect of the concussion was to throw the fore wheels of the baggage car off the track. It … continued running on the cross ties until it was entirely stopped by the rocks in the cut, when the general crash took place, and all the cars were broken in pieces – causing the final disastrous result.

The 1891 Wreck at Hermann Quarry

In February 1891 on a cold Friday evening, engine 614 was pulling the passenger train from Columbus to Madison, with George Wetzel as engineer. The train was running about 30 mph. The locomotive struck a stone that had been placed in the track near the Hermann quarry and left the track. When it left the track, it ran some two hundred feet, mired down in the mud, and turned over on its side. Engineer Wetzel and the fireman, Charles Tindall, stayed at their posts until the engine stopped and were uninjured. The baggage and passenger cars stayed on the track. The passengers were well shaken up, but no one was injured. The accident delayed the passenger train seven hours.

The 1902 Cornbrook Wreck

In the early years of the 20th Century, there was a siding about two miles north of Columbus at a place known as Tank House Curve. On December 3, 1902, a disastrous wreck occurred north of this siding at a place called Cornbook. A train of 25 empty gravel cars returning to the quarry was headed north from Columbus. The locomotive was running forward, facing north. When the train arrived at Tank House Curve siding, the engineer ran his locomotive around to the rear of the train, intending to shove the empty cars northward into the spur of the gravel pit at Cornbrook, near the present highway overpass. The gravel pit spur had a facing switch (which a train heads into) leading off from the main line. The locomotive was pushing the cars with the caboose next to the engine. Soon the train arrived at Cornbrook and started to shove its cars into the gravel pit spur.

Meanwhile, Number 27, the northbound evening passenger train, left Columbus that winter night at 8:00 pm, on time. Under timetable rules the passenger train was superior to the gravel train and was cleared by the Columbus block operator to proceed northward. The train movement control system used by the PRR on this line at the time was known as manual block (see Appendix). Manual block does not provide automatic block signals to indicate the presence of a train in the block or track section ahead. Instead, a train is authorized to enter a block by telegraphic or telephonic communication between the block operators at both ends of the block, under authority of the train dispatcher. Once the Columbus operator had cleared Number 27 for movement northward into the block, its crew assumed that all trains were in the clear and not occupying the main track.

When the passenger train rounded Tank House Curve, it had picked up speed. The conductor was walking through the warm cars, punching tickets. In the locomotive cab the engineer’s vision was impaired by the poor light of the kerosene oil headlight. Nevertheless, he thought all was well. Suddenly, looming up from the blackness a tender showed its dim light to the rear.

Immediately, there was a deafening roar as the passenger engine plowed headlong into the tender of the freight locomotive. It shoved the tender up on top of the cab of the freight locomotive, collapsing the cab and injuring the engineer, whose name was Sullivan, and the fireman. The passenger locomotive continued to shove the freight engine forward, smashing the cabin car (the PRR’s name for the caboose) into matchsticks and killing the rear brakeman of the gravel train. The rear part of the train of empty gravel cars was either derailed or destroyed. The freight conductor, Cain, and the other brakeman, Hicks, jumped just in time and were not killed.

The passenger locomotive meanwhile had found an impassable barrier of freight locomotive, wrecked freight cars, and debris. But the passenger cars kept shoving hard on the passenger train’s tender, pushing it up on top of the locomotive cab and killing the passenger train’s engineer, Sam Crowe, and its fireman, Achenbach. The passenger cars were made of wood and “telescoped” when the force of the collision caused them to pass inside one another. Debris and the wood passenger cars were ignited by the passenger cars’ coal stoves. Amazingly, no passengers were killed, but many were injured.

The Cornbrook wreck probably was the worst accident up to that time on the JM&I and its predecessors. As is often true for many railroad accidents, there were several contributory factors. Primarily, the crew of the gravel train was at fault because they failed to have their train in the clear either at Tank House Curve siding or in the gravel pit spur sufficiently in advance of the time the superior passenger train was due there. But since they did not have their train in the clear, the gravel train crew was responsible for providing the required flag protection to its rear to signal the passenger train to stop before hitting the gravel train. The manual block system also was a factor, since it allowed clearance of the passenger train’s departure from Columbus without “absolutely” establishing that the block ahead was clear of any trains.

The Blue River Bridge Wreck

On Saturday night, September 17, 1921, passenger train Number 327 left Columbus at 9:34 pm, made its scheduled running time to Edinburg behind a PRR Atlantic class 4-4-2 engine, and left Edinburg a little before 10:00 pm. As the train ran up the slight grade north of the station, it began picking up speed. The train rumbled onto the steel truss bridge spans over the rain-swollen Blue River.

Suddenly, the tender of the locomotive derailed. Quickly, the engineer shoved the Johnson bar into reverse to stop the moving train. But this action was too late to have any effect since the locomotive already had started to turn over to the right inside the bridge span. The locomotive tore the bridge spans off the piers, and the bridge spans and locomotive landed in the water. The locomotive was nearly upside-down and partly submerged in the swiftly flowing river. The first car, a baggage car, was turned on its right side and was almost entirely submerged except for its rear end. The next car, a baggage-express-coach combination, came to rest precariously on the south bridge abutment with its front end suspended in the air where the bridge had once been. Behind the combination car were a coach and two Pullman sleepers, which all remained on the track.

Immediately, people came to the scene from Edinburg after hearing the noise of the wreck. The crew of the ill-fated train escaped injury except for the engineer, M. S. Bennett. He was found pinned in the wreckage with only his head above water and was quickly taken to the office of a doctor in Edinburg. However, he died several hours later of internal injuries.

The PRR quickly implemented a plan to put the line back into operation as soon as possible. Except for work trains all train movements were stopped between Columbus and Edinburg. Through train movements were routed over the Columbus-Dublin Junction Secondary Track between Columbus and Dublin Junction and over the PRR mainline between Dublin Junction and Indianapolis. One work train was run each day between Indianapolis and the north end of the bridge. Work was begun on a temporary pile trestle, starting from the north bank of the river. The piles in the trestle were 70 feet long and were driven in a river that was 150 feet wide and 30 feet deep at the time. After the line was reopened, a permanent deck girder bridge of the latest type was constructed to replace the destroyed truss bridge spans erected in 1892 on stone piers.

Professional divers hired by the Post Office Department retrieved over a hundred sacks of mail and many packages, all waterlogged from hours in the submerged baggage car.

The wreck was visited by crowds of people who took many photographs and watched salvage operations as they occurred for several days afterward. The Columbus newspaper The Evening Republican estimated that around 2,000 people had seen the wreck by Monday, September 19, two days after the wreck. Because of the weekend many people who would otherwise have been working came over to see it. Professional photographers from Edinburg took pictures of the scene and sold the finished products to the spectators as souvenirs.

The first train over the newly-built, temporary pile trestle was northbound train Number 315, scheduled to leave Columbus at 9:05 am. This train passed over the temporary bridge Tuesday morning, only 60 hours after the wreck.

The main contributory factor to the wreck was a shift in the alignment of one of the truss bridge spans. Weakened bridge piers undermined by high water may have caused the shift. Fishermen had stated that one pier had been crumbling for several years and seemed to be in a weakened condition. In any case, the middle span of the bridge was out of line, and the locomotive hit the side of the span and shoved it off its pier into the water.

Unfortunately, during the work of clearing up the wreck and driving the temporary pile trestle, Garrison Whisman, the PRR’s official in charge, was killed when the boom of the wrecking derrick fell on him. Thus, two people died as the result of the Blue River Bridge wreck.

Other Wrecks

On April 13, 1937, the Shelbyville local was running between Rushville and Falmouth. Due to bad track, the locomotive suddenly derailed. The fireman, Ralph Champion, jumped off the left side of the engine and scrambled down the steep bank. He was caught at the bottom in a barbed wire fence and couldn’t free himself. The engine meanwhile had started to run down the left side of the embankment. When the engine turned over, it fell on Champion and killed him.

On October 25, 1943, the Madison local, pulled by engine 8329, an H6sb equipped with a special vacuum brake worked from the steam cylinders, started down the Madison Hill. J. K. Cumming was the engineer. The track was partially covered with leaves that were wet from previous rains. The locomotive did not have very good brakes and may have been taking more than its rated tonnage down the hill. About half way down with the brakes fully applied, the train started to skid. To come out of the skid, the engineer was forced to release the air brakes for a moment. Between the time the brakes were released and the time they were reapplied, speed increased and the engineer lost control of his train. The engineer whistled the signal to the train crew to “down brakes,” which meant to apply the hand brakes on the freight cars. The conductor, F. B. “Chuck” Conner, started to apply hand brakes. By this time the train was going too fast. When the locomotive reached the sharp curve to the left at the foot of the hill, it broke the outside rail and derailed. A few cars behind the engine derailed, but some of the following cars left the track and went straight ahead instead of taking the curve, landing in a nearby pasture. Meanwhile, the cars at the rear of the train jackknifed and piled up on the right of way. Conductor Conner, who was riding one of these cars, was thrown forward through the air when the cars abruptly came to a halt. His head hit the trunk of a tree and he died.

Several hours later another H6sb, engine 8565, also specially equipped for the Madison Hill, started down to the scene of the earlier accident. This locomotive was not pulling any cars. It likewise lost its brakes and plunged down the hill into the wreck at the bottom, remaining on the track. On the way down about a dozen railroad employees who were riding the engine jumped off and escaped with a few broken bones. The engineer, R. W. Pruitt, received a back injury and never worked again. The first wreck was in the daytime; the second was that night.

Two miles south of Columbus, there was a train wreck that involved Charlie Williamson, a good friend of mine and my family. He was engineer on the Seymour local freight returning home to Columbus one evening. As Charlie’s locomotive rounded the curve south of the siding at Garden City, two miles south of Columbus, he suddenly saw the markers of a caboose immediately ahead. He couldn’t stop before his locomotive plowed into the caboose, scattering his locomotive and its tender, the caboose, and many freight cars over the right of way. For his part in the accident, Charlie was dismissed from service, but he was later reinstated. Afterward, when he was the engineer on the Columbus yard switcher, he became a very helpful friend. He enjoyed describing to me the features of his H10s locomotive and once showed me how to grill a sandwich on the backhead of his locomotive boiler! Charlie was not much over five feet tall. His overalls, cap, and other clothes gave him the classic appearance of an old-time railroad engineer. He enjoyed pie each day for breakfast. He could make any steam locomotive do as he wished.

This photo was taken by R. Barrett of Edinburg of the 1921 Blue River bridge wreck, looking upriver from west side of bridge showing piles being driven for temporary trestle. Train was moving from right to left and derailed in bridge, turning over to right. The force of the locomotive pulled the spans off their piers and into the water. Photo is from collection of Miss Lola Whisman.

This photo shows the locomotive on its right side, followed by the nearly submerged baggage car and the baggage-express-coach combination car resting on temporary cribbing. Photo is from collection of Miss Lola Whisman.

This photo shows the locomotive on its right side. Engineer M. S. Bennett died later of internal injuries. Photo is from collection of Miss Lola Whisman.

This photo shows PRR crane with wood boom that was used to clear the wreck. Man on the right in tie and white hat is Garrison Whisman, the PRR official in charge, who later was killed when this boom fell on him. Photo is from collection of Miss Lola Whisman.