They concur he probably tried a radical slow-down by reversing the drive wheels. Researchers don’t know with certainty how fast Broady was driving the train on the downgrade toward the Dan River, or how he responded after realizing he was in dire trouble. The engine had been known to achieve that speed, though not in this terrain of southern Virginia. Some witnesses claimed the train must have been doing 90. A crewman later reported that Old 97 was traveling so fast as it rolled through the Dry Fork way station, about 15 miles north of Danville, that he couldn’t pick up the mail pouch hanging from the stanchion over the tracks. It was commonly understood, though, why Broady and other engineers with a zest for speed were assigned to government-contracted runs.īetween Lynchburg and Danville, Broady set the train fairly screaming. Rail companies-the Southern and rivals like the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line-denied imperiling the lives of crewmen in order to maintain schedules. The 97 was running late because it had been delayed in Washington, DC, waiting for another mail train overdue at the capital rail hub.Īccording to the famous song, it was in Broady’s “orders” to make up lost time. They were to take the train to Spencer, North Carolina, 167 miles to the southwest. Even in the hilly environs of southern Virginia and upstate North Carolina, factoring in stops, a mail train could average almost 40 miles an hour.Įarly on the afternoon of 27 September, a Sunday, engineer Broady and a fresh crew took charge of the 97 at Monroe, Virginia, about seven miles north of Lynchburg. It was not unusual for a mail train on level straights to accelerate to 70, 80 or even 90mph. It was made for the mail service, a fiercely competitive branch of rail transportation in which companies like the Southern vied for lucrative government contracts to deliver mail quickly and reliably. The 10-wheeled, coal-fueled steam engine that pulled Train 97 was only a year old in 1903. The 97 Was not “Old,” but It Was Indisputably Fast Then the engine jumped the trestle, the wooden cars crashing on top of it in the mire of Stillhouse Creek, 75 feet below. Witnesses heard the shriek of the whistle, signaling a runaway train, and saw rail dust rising from the metallic sliding of locked iron wheels. Apparently, seeing the warnings, he attempted to slow the careening train by reversing the engine, but his speed was too extreme and the trestle curve too acute. A “sharp curve ahead” sign and 15mph speed notice warned unfamiliar engineers of pending danger.Įngineer Joseph Andrew “Steve” Broady had made this run only once before. Latter-day researchers guesstimate it was moving at about 50mph at the moment of derailment-still, far too fast. The famous song, “The Wreck of Old 97” (which otherwise is remarkably accurate in historical details), says the train was making “90 miles an hour” when it entered the 110-yard, sharply curved trestle on a three-mile downgrade. If the engineer failed to make up much of the lost time on his stretch, the company could be penalized financially. 1102 the train was known as “Old 97.” It was coming fast-very fast-for it was an hour behind schedule. Just before 3 o’clock in the afternoon, 27 September 1903, a Southern Railway train engine leading four cars approached the Stillhouse Trestle outside Danville, Virginia, southbound. A 1903 mail train wreck in Virginia spawned a classic folksong and brought federal contract policies under public contempt.
0 kommentar(er)
