Background
Washington D.C. is a city of 689545 people (as of 2020) and the capital of the USA, located in the far east of the country 56km/35mi southwest of Baltimore in the state of Maryland and 155km/96mi north of Richmond in the state of Virginia (both measurements in linear distance). The city itself is not part of any US federal state, possessing a special status placing it under exclusive jurisdiction by the US Congress.
Washington D.C.’s main train station is Washington Union Station, located in the eastern part of the city. The station offers 22 tracks on 18 platforms and is set up as a dead-end station, meaning trains stop ahead of a buffer-stop and have to reverse out of the station. The platform-area is followed by a large concourse (in simplified terms, a large hall), under which a basement level was used to house facilities for mail and baggage handling at the time of the accident. The spacious layout of the station matches the high number of passengers passing through even back in the 1950s, not just for regular traffic but also special occasions like the presidential inauguration ceremony.
The Train Involved
The “Federal” was an overnight express service provided at the time by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) from Boston to Washington D.C., carrying both passengers and mail. The train being provided by the PRR is likely why the accident is commonly referred to as the “Pennsylvania Railroad Wreck” despite not taking place in the state of Pennsylvania.
The train involved in the accident was numbered as service 173 and, by the time it reached Washington D.C., consisted of 16 four-axle cars pulled by PRR GG1 number 4876. The PRR Class GG1 is a streamlined ten-axle electric locomotive developed for express passenger service. Introduced in 1934 the GG1 measures 24.23m/79.5ft in length at a weight of 215 metric tons. The massive locomotive was propelled by 12 motors, two per driven axle, putting out a combined 6300kW/8500hp. This allowed the train to reach speeds of 160kph/100mph even with a heavy passenger train on the back, a rather high speed for the time. Unit #4876 was built in January 1939 and had served without incident until the day of the accident. The train carried 400 passengers by the time it reached Washington D.C., along with a group of conductors, and was under the command of Mister Brower and his assistant.
The accident
On the 15th of January 1953 PRR GG1 #4876 is taking over the “Federal” at New York City’s Pennsylvania Station in the early morning hours, being the train’s third locomotive. The service had accumulated a 45 minute delay the prior evening, shortly after departing, when stuck brakes were discovered during the stop at Kingston (Rhode Island). Conductors found that a pneumatic valve at the back of car 3 was inexplicably closed despite the train supposedly passing a check of the pneumatic system ahead of its departure from Boston. The pneumatic system aboard the train functioned as such that a line running the length of the train was pressurized by the locomotive, releasing the brakes. If the driver (in the US referred to as the engineer) wished to slow down he would release pressure from the system, leading to valves directing air from smaller reservoirs aboard each car to the car’s brakes and applying them. Similarly, if the train separates unintentionally (during a derailment, for example) the torn pneumatic line would also cause an application of the brakes. But with the shut valve any input from the driver couldn’t get past the third car, meaning a brake-input from the driver would have only applied the brakes on the locomotive and the first three cars.
The train crew noted the incident into the train’s documentation and ran another inspection when the train reached New York City, where the affected valve was found to be in the correct, open position. Following the brief inspection the train departed New York City at 4:38am and made its scheduled stops at Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware and Baltimore with no further brake-issues being reported. The train thus departed Baltimore at 7:50am and was quickly accelerated to 130kph/80mph, the scheduled speed for its approach on Washington D.C. Upon passing the town of Landover, Maryland (10km/6.2mi linear distance from Washington Union Station, the distance on the tracks is slightly longer) Mister Bower applied the brakes, intending to slow the train ahead of entering Washington D.C. Trouble reared its head immediately, with the train only slowing to 97kph/60mph. Mister Bower, knowing he was headed for a downhill stretch of track heading into a dead-end station in a downtown area triggered an emergency stop, dumping air pressure, but even that only brought the speed down to 80kph/50mph, still too fast. As a last resort he reversed the traction motors, essentially turning them into generators, but the increased drag had no measurable effect on the speed before the locomotive’s electrical system broke down due to excessive stress.
Witnesses passed by the train later reported seeing sparks fly from the wheels of the locomotive and the leading three cars, who had their brakes completely applied and were moving along with stationary wheels. The train began descending a 1700m/5500ft long downhill section of track, causing it, while moving at an excessive speed to begin with, to pick up even more speed as it moved down the 0.73% downhill gradient. Mister Bower, being out of options, laid on the horn to warn people in the path of the out of control train and prepared for inevitable disaster.
The signal box operator at Union Station’s shunting yard had just set the path for the incoming express when the train raced past him at wildly excessive speed, leading to the operator calling the station office, reaching a clerk named Mister Kopp. Upon picking up the phone Kopp heard the operator yell “Runaway on Track 16!”, just in time to look up and see the train approach in the distance, heading right for the station office which was located at the end of track 16. Mister Kopp yelled at his coworkers to run for their lives, following them out of the office to warn passengers waiting at the platform and in the adjacent concourse. At the same time Mister Murphy, one of the conductors aboard the train, ran down the train from end to end and shouted instructions for passengers to get as low as they could, ideally lying down on the floor.
The train reached the end of Track 16 at 8:38am, 20 seconds after Mister Kopp and his coworkers had abandoned their office, still travelling at 56kph/35mph. The train crashed through the buffer stop at the end of the tracks, obliterated the station office as well as a newsstand and took out a steel pillar as it started skidding off-course to the right on the slick concrete floor, which its stationary wheels carved deep grooves into. The locomotive finally came to a stop just ahead of a crowded waiting room (the nose of it opening the door by a few inches), just as the concrete floor collapsed under the weight of the locomotive, dropping the rear of it into the mail and baggage handling rooms below. Two passenger cars had broken loose from the locomotive, with one sliding slightly past it before also stopping.
Nobody died in the derailment, but 43 people were injured, 6 of which severely enough to require overnight hospitalization. Most of the workers in the basement had gone on break 8 minutes before the train came through the ceiling, sparing their lives, 4 were trapped but rescued without injury.
Aftermath
Most of the 400 passengers exited the train on their own, with those in the leading car being tasked to climb out of the hole the locomotive had stamped into the station floor. Arriving firefighters, seeing they didn’t need to immediately enter the train or fight any fires, provided ladders to aid in their evacuation. In a silly anecdote a passenger was later asked by a newspaper why he threw a chair through the lounge car’s window to climb out, as the doors were apparently usable. His reasoning:
I always wanted to do that.
Mister Kopp had run from the office right to a phone on the other side of the concourse, calling emergency services and alerting them of the derailment literally as it happened, enabling a quick response. Mister Brower climbed from his beached locomotive uninjured, his assistant suffered what is described as “Minor scratches”. Witnesses described the locomotive “rearing up like a horse” (lifting the front end off the ground) as it went through the buffer stop, which may have aided in not having it go through the floor front-first (and possibly keep going in the basement).
With no dead to be recovered and all passengers and crew being off the train relatively soon investigators were able to take the lead before noon, examining the train. Due to the information about the closed valve earlier in the train’s journey they started at car 3, and didn’t have to go anywhere else. The valve at the back of car 3 was shut, separating the locomotive’s and leading three car’s brakes from the rest of the braking system. This explained why witnesses had seen sparks fly from the front of the train, cars 4–16 hadn’t had any brakes applied as the train approached Washington D.C. However, as the train had pulled away from its previous stop without issue the valve must have closed while the train was in motion, rather than being accidentally closed (or not opened) by a shunting worker.
The investigators found that a design-flaw with the type of passenger car used enabled the valve to come in contact with a crossmember of the coupler-assembly, possibly shutting the valve. To make matters worse car 4 was a different but compatible design, with investigators finding that the different couplers being combined increased the likelihood of the valve hitting the crossmember in a way that closed it. This was all there was to it as far as a cause, a poorly designed coupler and unfortunate combination of compatible rolling stock was to blame for the accident. The investigation’s report closes with the main recommendation that the coupler-design found on car 3 should be retired, a suggestion likely followed up on (although I couldn’t find concrete evidence of the railway’s reaction).
With the investigation on site finishing up most of the train cars were recovered from the site, with the rear cars being towed away before forward cars could be dragged out of the hole and off the platform. Only the locomotive remained, sitting in a gaping hole in the capital’s main train station. It was just five days until Dwight D. Eisenhower would be inaugurated as the USA’s 34th president, an event which would draw massive crowds. Unable to remove the 220 metric ton piece of steel in time to fix the floor workers cleared out space in the basement and lowered the front of the locomotive down into it as well, closing up the hole above it with wood before putting down a layer of quick-drying asphalt. Lastly, a temporary newsstand and station office were set up on top of the temporary floor, finishing up with just two days to spare. Unfortunately no photos of the temporary flooring appear to exist.
With the inauguration over and the crowds handled the temporary floor was removed in order to access the locomotive, only for workers to realize their cranes couldn’t actually lift the heavy machine due to the confines of where they had to set the cranes up. The locomotive’s insurer refused to write off the severely damaged machine, which would allow workers to cut it up for scrap on site, as they figured a repair to be cheaper than a replacement. This meant workers had to figure out a way to recover the behemoth, which was eventually achieved by workers disassembling the locomotive and removing pieces of it on hand-carts up the ramp used by baggage-handlers. The frame and large parts of the bodyshell were well beyond saving and were cut up for scrap on site, though. Documentation on the repairs shows that pretty much no structural part of the locomotive was reused, but internals like the traction motors, wheels, brakes and other parts could be reused after the giant puzzle had been hauled to the Altoona (Pennsylvania) maintenance yard. The locomotive re-entered service in October 1953, now carrying a bright Tuscan Red livery, serving 30 more years before being retired in 1983 as one of the last GG1 to end service. Today the locomotive sits outside at the B&O Railroad Museum in the dark green livery it was repainted back into in 1956 and is in poor condition, being in need of extensive restoration work.
History repeats itself
The investigation proposing retirement of the problematic coupler-design, stricter guidelines regarding faulty brakes being introduced after the accident and thorough brake system checks during shunting, which didn’t exist in that form at the time, having since become standard brake-failure rail accidents from isolated pneumatic lines still happen nowadays, and not just from human negligence during the checks. In 2010 a freight train operated by the ÖBB (Austrian national railway) derailed at Braz (Austria) after a brake line separated and got pinched in a way that closed off the line, keeping the brakes in most of the train from applying. In the case of Braz it wasn’t a valve hitting the coupler and closing, it was a valve hitting the tracks below and separating (which should have triggered an automatic stop from the pressurized air escaping) before the third car’s brake line was pinched (which kept the air from escaping from car 3 and beyond). The accident at Braz was the topic of installment #110 of this blog and can be found here:
Real Life writes the Plot
The accident at Washington Union Station inspired the 1976 thriller-comedy “Silver Streak”, which ends with the titular express train running out of control (although not due to brake failure) and finally crashing through the buffers at Chicago’s Central Station in a scene somewhat reminiscent of what witnesses must have seen at Washington Union Station in 1953. In true hollywood fashion the train does lay waste to a lot more of the station in a much more explosive fashion than PRR #4876 did, though. The scene in question can be watched in the following video:
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A kind reader is posting the installments on reddit for me, I cannot interact with you there but I will read the feedback and corrections. You can find the post right here.
