Ohio Train Disasters

intentional.

INTRODUCTION

My paternal grandmother, Ugenia Monaco Turzillo, lived on Depot Street across from the railroad tracks and the little old Cherry Creek, New York station. When the big black goliaths rumbled down the track and passed her house, the dishes and glasses in the cupboards shook until I was sure some of them would jitterbug off the shelves and smash on the floor. Still, I loved sitting on the porch of her tiny shotgun-style house and watching the trains roll by. Even now, the wail of a locomotive’s whistle is a pleasant, if not melancholy, sound.

It was in this little town that my dad, Lee Turzillo, as a very young man, hopped on the back of a slow-moving freight train for a bigger city and the dream of a new and more prosperous life. He told my sister and me this story many times. I often thought that if it had not been for trains, he might not have realized his potential at becoming one of the foremost authorities on concrete in the world during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Ironically, part of his career was devoted to building, restoring and repairing railroad bridges.

Just as the railroads played a role in my family’s history, they were central in developing the Buckeye State. By the mid-1800s, Ohio was home to a network of railroad systems that transported wares and goods throughout the country. Passenger trains carried travelers from one station to the next or took them great distances. Cities and towns sprang up all along the iron rails. The railroad connected our state to the rest of the nation.

While Ohioans and their merchandise rode the rails, so did death and destruction. Train travel was not always as safe as it is today, as evidenced in the twelve chapters offered in this book. Accidents happened because of human error or negligence. Sometimes bridges were not up to the weight of the huge iron beasts. Still other disasters were caused by derailment.

Fire was the number one killer during an accident. Coaches were heated in the winter by stoves and lit after dark by oil lanterns. When a train wrecked, the stoves and lanterns tipped over. Flames fueled by oil from the lamps and dry wood from the cars’ construction would immediately engulf everything, leaving most passengers to perish. The wrecks in Ashtabula, Cuyahoga Falls and Republic are just a few examples.

Steam pouring out of a wrecked engine was maybe even a more horrific killer, as it scalded people to death. The disaster in Dresden is a heartbreaking example.

Other accidents produced mangled bodies—some unidentified to this day—from twisted metal, sharp glass and splintered wood. They left widows and orphans behind and made some men and women heroes.

Here are twelve stories of trainmen, victims and the behemoth locomotives that helped to build the Buckeye State and our lives.

Chapter 1

THE MIDDLETOWN TRAGEDY

There were no celebrations in Middletown, Ohio, on Monday, the Fourth of July in 1910. Instead, a head-on crash between a passenger train and freight train, three hundred yards from the town’s depot, stole the Independence Day revelry, as well as twenty-four lives. Thirty-six people were badly injured.

Freight train No. 90 was owned by the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton (CH&D) Railroad. Loaded with lumber, it was headed north on its own mainline, pulling gondola cars, flat cars and boxcars.

The passenger train was the New York–Cincinnati Flyer, No. 26, one of the fastest and most elegantly appointed passenger trains of the day. It ran between New York and Cincinnati. Owned by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis (Big Four) Railroad, it was rolling south carrying passengers from Cleveland to Cincinnati on the CH&D tracks. Ordinarily, it would have been traveling on its own track, but when it arrived at Dayton, its crew received orders to detour onto the CH&D road. An earlier accident at Genoa several miles north of Middletown had closed off its usual route. It picked up a CH&D pilot engineer, William Wald, at that point.

Harry Hamel, the freight train’s engineer, was just pulling out of Middletown when he received his orders to make Poasttown three miles north, take a siding there and give the passenger train a clear track. He realized that he had only seven minutes to do that. He knew he could not make it to Poasttown in time. Instead of taking the chance, he attempted to back his train into the West Middletown siding. But there was not time.

Third Street in 1910, today’s Central Avenue. The ball in the sky was an advertising device. Courtesy of the MidPointe Library System, Middletown, Ohio.

At 1:02 p.m., the passenger train came roaring around the corner doing fifty to sixty miles per hour and slammed head on into the freight train. The impact was so great that the engines were embedded into one twisted hulk of iron and metal and the sound thundered for miles around.

West Middletown depot. Courtesy of the MidPointe Library System, Middletown, Ohio.

The CH&D and New York–Cincinnati Flyer’s engines embedded into each other. Courtesy of the MidPointe Library System, Middletown, Ohio.

When the engines plowed into each other, one of them rammed through the combination baggage car and smoker. The front end of the day coach, or ladies’ car, reserved for women and their children, was crushed. It and the smoker/baggage car were hurled across the track, one landing on top of the other. Then they both rolled ten feet down the embankment into a cornfield. Every seat in the coach was ripped from its fastenings. The five passengers riding in the smoker/baggage car all met their deaths. Three women died, as did some of the men in the ladies’ car. Many victims were pinned under the wreckage.

The dining car was ground into tinder. Nearly all of the fifteen passengers riding in that car perished. Those who were not killed were gravely injured.

The Flyer was pulling three Pullman sleepers. The first, named the Duvas, was a complete wreck, with the forward vestibule being reduced to kindling. The sleepers were all derailed. Although some of the passengers in the sleepers were merely shaken up, others were slashed by flying glass. A number of victims on the sleepers received broken bones and bruises from being hit by or pinned under heavy debris. But they all escaped death and life-threatening injuries.

The Flyer’s engineer, Peter Jennings, and its fireman, W.P. Lamb, jumped from the cab seconds before the crash. Both men suffered internal injuries. Jennings was scalded and later lost one of his legs. The two trainmen lived in Delaware, Ohio. The CH&D pilot engineer, Wald, and conductor, Tom Mollony, emerged from the wreck unscathed, but the brakeman, Frank Golden, was killed. The rest of the crew denied jumping from the impending disaster.

Freight train engineer Hamel, of Cincinnati, and his fireman, Vernon Wallace, of Lima, saw the crash coming and leaped from their locomotive just in time to save their lives. Neither sustained any injuries.

Any of the crew and passengers who had not been harmed began rescue efforts immediately. Faced with injured and dead pinned under the wreckage or lying along the track, they worked feverishly. Within a few minutes, eleven bodies had been recovered.

In less an hour, word spread of the accident, and a crowd began to gather. During the rescue efforts, it swelled to about two thousand people. Automobiles and horses clogged the main roads in Middletown. Standing on parts of the wreck, the spectators ignored the danger of getting too close and hampered the recovery.

One of the first critically injured to be taken out of the wreck was a young woman named Fay N. Daubenmire, who had boarded the train in her hometown of Pleasantville, Ohio, at 8:29 that morning. The eldest daughter of Peter and Mary Daubenmire, she was twenty-two years old. A highly respected and cultured young lady, she taught in the Mount Gilead schools.

The Depot by Mary Louise Skinner. Courtesy of the MidPointe Library System, Middletown, Ohio.

Fay N. Daubenmire dressed in what looks like her traveling clothes. Courtesy of Cindy Wagner.

Like so many young women, Fay had great hopes of a career on the stage and was on her way to Cincinnati to take special training in elocution. To this end, she was to have met the famed actress Miss Jennie Mannheimer, who was the director of the Cincinnati School of Expression. The actress had secured a room for Fay in Cincinnati on June Street, where she could live while she studied for her stage career.

Mrs. George Huff and Mrs. F.W. Weickel carried her broken and bleeding body on boards to a humble little restaurant near the accident. One of the workmen folded his jacket and slid it under her head. The women tried to find out her name, but her throat and chest had been seared by steam and her vocal chords were paralyzed. Weakly, she signed her first name, F-A-Y, and then her blistered hands dropped to her sides. The women encouraged her. She gave a faint smile and again feebly raised her hands to sign her last name. She lived for about an hour after the accident. The Reverend T.S. Gerhold, pastor of the Evangelical Church of Middletown, gave comfort in her last moments.

An account in the Cincinnati Times Star was especially heartbreaking. It read in part:

Heads bared and bowed as the pastor knelt beside the dying woman, and lifted his hands and his voice in her behalf to heaven. With her fast ebbing strength, she put forth her hands and touched the arm of the