The Bryn Athyn Train Wreck of 1921

there is a long abandoned railroad snaking its way out of philadelphia through montgomery and bucks counties reaching newtown pennsylvania and in the 1920s this railroad changed the way that all railroads in the united states had to operate and like most abrupt policy changes it comes as the result of disaster and tragedy [Music] in some parts of the railroad today the tracks have been ripped up and replaced with a bike path it's along this bike path now called the penny pack trail that our story takes place the place we're going isn't off the beaten path and it doesn't require any special gear to get to it's only a mile or so from the nearest parking lot along the walk we see splintering telegraph poles and old signal towers that ran in abundance along the once active newtown branch of the philadelphia and reading railway [Music] in the spring and summer there's plenty of wildlife along the trail even though neighborhoods are just nearby and plenty of people frequent the trail [Music] after about a mile we reach the most imposing part of the trail a jagged gulch where the trail bends around a blind corner [Music] even if you don't know the history of this gulch it's still bound to make you stop in your tracks on your first visit but on the snowy morning of december 5th 1921 it was the site of a head-on collision between two steam trains resulting in the deaths of 27. in a combination of poor timing and negligence what was normally a railroad operating like clockwork was now about to experience one of the worst railroad disasters the company could have imagined 6 48 a.m train number 151 a local train departs from the redding terminal in philadelphia heading northeast to newtown pennsylvania under the charge of conductor evans and engineer yaekel local number 151 consists of engine 167 a combine car and two passenger cars all of wooden construction with a steel frame engine 167 was a redding camelback built by redding in 1900 a type 440 class d3h for you train nerds out there but that info isn't relevant to the story the wooden carriages well they are 151 was operating on time philadelphia is and was a big city surrounded by hundreds of miles of farmland every morning from newtown a milk train steamed toward the city to supply the nearly 2 million inhabitants of philadelphia at the time milk train number 154 left newtown pennsylvania hauling that sweet liquid gold at 6 50 a.m under the command of conductor stout and engineer rook milk train number 154 consisted of engine 265 and 5 freight cars engine 265 was also a camelback built by baldwin in 1901 the milk train was running five minutes behind schedule around the halfway point between philadelphia and newtown the tracks which were two parallel tracks converged into one and continued on and through a very complicated system of signaling and scheduling trains going in both directions shared the same track they would pull off to the side and let another train pass ahead and then they would continue on their way once the track was clear through signaling trains coming inbound towards philadelphia were given the priority and trains going outbound towards newtown usually had to wait for them to pass conductor evans brings local train 151 to the bryn athen train station which is this now a post office today about 600 feet ahead of his train is one of those sidelines i just mentioned and conductor evans knows that he is going to have to go ahead and pull his train into that sideline and let the daily milk train pass evans disembarks goes into the station and meets with station master russell clayton now in order to proceed he must receive a written report from the station master telling him to go forward which clayton gives to evans every day evans receives the same written report bring the train ahead and onto the spur line and wait for the daily milk train to pass by evans folds the paper up puts it in his pocket climbs aboard and he and engineer yaek will go about their usual routine here's the problem though that's not what today's orders say today's order says to bring the train to the spur line wait for the milk train to pass and then wait for inbound express train number 156 to pass by shortly after that express train is not usually scheduled for this day and evans and yaeko they didn't read the order express number 156 under the command of conductor smith and engineer rook yes that's a second engineer rook in this story consists of camelback engine 278 built by baldwin in 1902 four coaches and a combination car at the end all made of wood why don't we go ahead and see if we can actually find where the switch track was for the spur line i don't think there's anything left and i don't even think you can see where it is but it's 593 feet that way i got that from the wreck commission [Music] the spur line at the bryn athen train station had a switch right about here and the track the spur track was parallel like they were right on top of each other right next to each other and backed right up to the station my only evidence for that is this photograph that i have showing a camelback coming through the bren athens station approximately in the 1930s when evans pulled local 151 up to the spur line right here and started backing it in milk train 154 was already ahead at the signal waiting for him to back into the spur line and waiting for that clearance before they can proceed 151 backed into the siding and milk train 154 passed by brynn athen at about 7 45 a.m at this time express train 156 having left newtown 15 minutes prior comes to the churchville station the express train came into the station from this direction at the time there was a block signal right here a block signal was sort of like a traffic light for trains there's a sign telling the train that it must stop and there's another sign telling the train that the track is clear and the train is okay to proceed on the morning of december 5th 1921 at 7 45 am the block signal was in the stop position indicating that express train 156 had to come to a complete stop here and receive orders from the station master there was an identical block signal up ahead at the spur line telling local train 151 that it needed to continue to be stopped and wait for the trains to pass smith received his written orders here and these written orders told him that local 151 was waiting ahead at the spur line for both the milk train and smith's express train to pass through just as he got those orders a signal came in from the brynn athens station that milk train 154 had passed through and it was now clear for the express train to proceed onward the block signal was then cleared indicating that smith could take his train forward now back at number 151 waiting on the spur line station master russell clayton leaves the train behind and starts walking back to this station here leaving 151 to continue to wait for the trains behind him but as he's walking back he glances towards the train and sees it pulling out of the spur line and back onto the main track against his written orders completely oblivious to the inbound express train now clayton runs after the train waving his arms and shouting and doing everything he can to signal it but they don't hear or see him the train proceeds on he has no way of communicating with either of the two trains that are closing in on each other there is nothing he can do to stop them yes the block signal at the spur line was still in the stop position but conductor evans believed that the written order in his hands was enough to trump that signal and yes that written order in his hands that he was using his justification to move forward is the very one that he did not read and he still hasn't by this point the trains proceed on their way for several more minutes closing in on each other all that clayton russell can do is call the local hospitals to send out ambulances in advance and do you remember those decrepit telegraph polls these polls carried that call for help number 151 made a final stop at the paper mill station which there is no remains of today there a couple of track workers disembarked the train after that 151 proceeded onward and it was only a half a mile more to the crash site the trains approached the gulch which was the absolute worst points on the line for them to meet a blind turn a narrow passage local 151 was pushing 30 miles per hour while the southbound express train was surpassing 35 as they entered the gulch that's a combined total of 65 miles per hour neither train was able to see one another until they were an estimated 40 feet apart in the split second before the collision the crew of express train 156 slammed on the brakes but it was too late to have any positive effect the firemen of each train were killed instantly as boilers exploded the two locomotives were thrown into the air and landed in a pile one on top of the other and both on top of 151's tender the first two cars in both trains were crushed in on themselves by the impact flaming coals rained down in all directions with quite a few landing on the cars closest to the locomotive pileup they ignited instantly the walls of the gulch funneled the flames back allowing them to rapidly spread to the after cars thanks to station master clayton's pre-emptive calls for help firemen and rescue workers were there within only a few minutes with local farmers arriving even sooner they rushed to the wrecked forward cars as those were the ones in the most imminent danger but they couldn't help anyone one witness recalls seeing passengers inside banging on the windows until they were overtaken by flames regardless the rescue workers couldn't even get in close as the gulch was an impenetrable fiery inferno in quick efforts to get the severely wounded away from the wreck site they were loaded up into the last car of one of the trains it was uncoupled before the flames could reach it and those who could walk pushed the car several hundred feet away where it was met by the first ambulances to the scene dozens of firefighters worked relentlessly to try to get the blazing inferno out obviously there's no mechanical source for water out here for them to to fight the fire so what they ended up having to do was pump water out of the nearby creek while passengers in the later parts of the train were able to get out it's believed that most of the 27 who were killed burned to death unable to escape from the crushed cars twenty of the dead were passengers five were off-duty train crew and the remaining two were the firemen of each train very few people escaped the train unscathed however with 70 notable injuries several of the dead were buried in a mass grave at the southampton reformed church in churchville one of the very few physical reminders today of the tragedy though injured the conductors and engineers survived and were heavily investigated not surprisingly the crew of 151 were found to be at fault for taking their orders for granted and acting on them without reading them they were sentenced to six to nine months of jail time each and fined five hundred dollars though they were grossly negligent locals gathered over thirty thousand signatures requesting their pardon knowing that the burden on their conscience was already enough punishment the pardon was granted after they served the first two months of their sentence as the wreck was cleaned up and trained service continued the rapid spread of the fire to the proceeding cars was focused on as a result of the disaster wooden carriages were banned outright nationwide and aside from heritage railroads or museums they still are today as a direct result of the brynn athen wreck of 1921. now here's an interesting tidbit in the 1970s after septa took over rail service on this line there was another accident in this exact spot in this exact gulch now damages were minor and i don't believe there were any injuries though the line was completely discontinued in 1983 and is now being converted to a biking and walking trail when you visit the site today you'll notice that the railroad bed is still mostly intact the bike path uses it pretty much unchanged except minus the rails and the ties in fact at a few points there's even some old railroad bridges that the path goes across that were probably around in the 30s and 40s if not also the 20s and 10s at the time of the crash the gulch which is still pretty much unchanged is now called death gulch highly dramatic but we can definitely understand why to the south of the gulch are two benches with memorial blacks on them and there's also an information sign which you can read about the story of the wreck and there's also some photographs there of of the incident the raised railroad bed here leading up to the gulch is plainly visible there isn't any debris that still remains around here there's no pieces of train or anything like that but there are still a plentiful amount of pieces of coal obviously from when the two engines exploded and threw coal out hundreds of feet in all directions there's some pretty large chunks like this one scattered about the forest in the surrounding area around the wreck site at the bryn athens station today which is preserved as a post office you can still see the old milk loading platform for the daily milk train which doesn't always stop at this site and it didn't on december 5th 1921 but it sometimes did you can also see some of the old signal towers although i think most of the ones that still remain were after 1921. if they're from the period awesome but i really don't know this is a wreck that is largely forgotten i've lived in this area my whole life and i only first heard about this a few years ago it had such a massive impact on railroading for example the wooden cars being banned outright but as a result they also put special emphasis on following written orders now they didn't have to change any of the rules or the policies but they simply put emphasis that you cannot go lax they already had to have written orders from the station master to proceed to the switch they already had the signals in place nothing really needed to change but they wanted to really emphasize with their workers that even if you think you know what you're doing you have to follow it especially so hopefully this helps shed a little bit of light on it and it tells people the full story of the december 5th 1921 bryn athen train wreck [Music] you

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 229,882

Keywords: bryn athyn, bryn, athyn, athen, train, wreck, crash, reading, philadelphia and reading, railroad, rail, railfan, road, disaster, history, documentary, septa, derail, derailment, pennypack, penny, pack, trail, pennypack trail, bucks county, newtown, southampton, southhampton, churchville, holland, pennsylvania, pa, montgomery county, bucks, montgomery, philadelphia, reading company, company, p and r, p&r, camelback, engine, locomotive

Id: 3_TD9bgCrSo

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020