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From: "David MonteVerde" david AT gvtrail DOT com
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2017 17:08:48 -0400
Subject: Gibson Lackawanna Train wreck on the 4th of July 1912
"Gibson_QD_EL_Main_Erie_tracks_to_the_right_and_ex_DL_W_George_Lane.jpg" - image/jpeg, 2048x975 (24bit)

The Gibson Train wreck 105 years ago and Roy asked me a question about the site today.



From: David MonteVerde .
Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2017 4:39 PM
To: 'Roy Blanchard' .
.
Subject: RE: Gibson Lackawanna Train wreck on the 4th of July 1912



Funny I was just there on the 3rd of July. The whole thing is changed in 100+ years the ERIE was move out of downtown Corning along the Lackawanna in 1952, along the Chemung River>River-Erie-DL&W, north to south. Then they tore out the Lackawanna in EL times, then the state came along moved the EL-now NS Southern Tier Main over on the Lackawanna alignment and stuck an expressway I-86 on the ERIE alignment shoving the river over. In this change, any signs of the Gibson Lackawanna site are obliterated, and there is a huge wall for the highway.



The attached photo 1 looks west (“…eb fgt. Onto Erie”) shows a Lackawanna train crossing over to the Erie after the DL was abandoned between here and Binghamton before the EL merger. The other photo looks east with the DL torn out. These are both before the placement of I86 through Gibson. https://www.bing.com/maps/aerial







David J. Monte Verde

President GVT Rail System

1 Mill Street Suite 101

Batavia, New York 14020

Cell 716 474-2014

Fax 585 343-4369

Office 585 343-5398





From: Roy Blanchard [mailto:rblanchard AT rblanchard DOT com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2017 3:37 PM
To: David Monte Verde >
Subject: Re: Gibson Lackawanna Train wreck on the 4th of July 1912



Got any pix of the site as it looks today?





Roy Blanchard

(215) 985-1110 Office

(215) 913-7740 iPhone

www.rblanchard.com









On Jul 5, 2017, at 3:15 PM, David MonteVerde > wrote:







The Corning train wreck (also known as the Gibson train wreck) was a railway accident that occurred at 5.21 a.m. on July 4, 1912 on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad at East Corning freight station in Gibson three miles east of Corning in New York State leaving 39 dead and 88 injured.

Accident

At 3:50 a.m. freight train No.393 left Elmira with 55 loaded cars; it experienced steaming problems and at 4:46 a.m. and pulled into a siding at East Corning freight station to investigate. As it was doing so a coupling broke, leaving several cars on the main line. The line operated Automatic Block Signals; the presence of a train in the block section automatically setting the preceding semaphore signals; the first to caution, the next to danger. In addition as it was foggy the flagman placed two torpedoes on the line to protect the rear of the train.

Passenger train No.9 running from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Buffalo and Niagara Falls left Elmira at 4:47; it consisted of ten cars hauled by two locomotives. It heeded the signals and came to a halt behind the disabled freight train. The engineer of No.9 decided to assist the freight train and the head locomotive was uncoupled to push the loose cars ahead onto the siding.

Meanwhile, train No.11, an eight car mail express pulled by a Wootten-type(‘camelback’) engine, also travelling from Hoboken to Buffalo, departed Elmira at 5:00 a.m. For some reason the engineer, William Schroeder, ignored two signals, one at caution and one at danger and plowed into the back of No.9 at a speed of 60 mph. The rear coach of No.9 was 'completely destroyed', the next one being of steel construction was less damaged only the 'vestibules and platforms on both ends were crushed', however it was 'stripped off its trucks and telescoped the third (wooden) car from the end through two-thirds of its length. All but two of the mail express cars were derailed and whiplashed, bringing down the telegraph poles on both sides of the track; meaning it was an hour before news of the disaster reached Corning. Meanwhile, hordes of spectators gathered hampering subsequent access by medical and rescue teams. A special relief train arrived from Elmira at 7 a.m. carrying doctors and nurses, but by 9 a.m. injured were still trapped in the wreckage.





Inquest and investigation

At the coroner's inquest it was revealed that 95% of the victims had suffered fractured skulls, the conclusion being that they had their heads out of the windows to try to determine the cause of the delay. The inquest also heard that engineer Schroeder had appeared drunk the morning of the accident at 12:30 a.m. Moreover, he was late for work that morning, appearing only after two men had been sent to rouse him. Schroeder denied being drunk, stating that he had drunk two gins 'as medicine'. The inquest completed on July 17, 1912, acquitting the Lackawanna Railroad but holding engineer Schroeder responsible for the crash.

The ICC investigation, published on July 30, 1912, centered on why No. 11 failed to stop. Schroeder said that the fog was very thick as he approached East Corning and that "he was able to distinguish signals only by very carefully watching for them, at times they could not be seen a distance of one car length". He also admitted that due to problems with the steam injectors he was "not constantly on the watch for the signals" and did not see the caution signal, the fusee or the flagman; only becoming aware of the train ahead when he was 150 feet from it. A member of the New York Public Service Commission stated "The railroad rules are very strict. The engineers are required to know the location of every signal. That is part of their business. It is their duty to observe every signal, if for any reason, they cannot or do not see it as the train passes, it is their duty to regard it as a danger signal and stop the train".

The investigation also criticized the flagman from No. 9, as unlike the flagman from the freight train, he failed to deploy torpedoes on the track (in his evidence he stated that when he heard No. 11 approaching he lit a fusee and placed it next to the engineman's side of the track and also flagged the oncoming train with a red flag but the engineman was looking across to the other side of the engine and failed to notice him).

But as well as attributing blame to individuals the investigation also made a number of recommendations. The regulations guiding the use of torpedoes should be clarified as they rely too greatly on the judgment of rail staff. Automatic block signaling would have provided far greater protection had the blocks overlapped; meaning that protection would have been provided by two stop signals (rather than just one) as well as the caution, hence one signal missed would not then have resulted a disaster. Finally, the safety of all-steel cars was highlighted over wooden construction as only two people were killed in the steel car, "the substitution of all steel equipment for wooden equipment in high speed passenger service shall be required at the earliest practical date". [2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corning_train_wreck



-------------------------



Another account:



Gibson, NY Train Wreck, July 1912

41 DEAD, 50 HURT AS EXPRESS HITS EXCURSION TRAIN.

At 65-Mile Speed Lackawanna Flier Crashers Into Crowded Cars Near Corning, N. Y.

ENGINEER IGNORES SIGNALS

Two Day Coaches Split in Two and a Pullman Crumpled Up by the Onrushing Locomotive.

VICTIMS KILLED IN SLEEP

A Few Passengers Who Rise to Learn Cause of Delay Witnesses of Tragedy.

SWIFTLY RUSH TO SUCCOR.

Injured Are Hurried to Corning Hospitals While Dead Are Laid Out for Identification.

MANY VICTIMS FROM HERE

Officials Blame Disaster on Express Engineer, Who, They Say, Ran By Warning Semaphore.

Special to The New York Times.

CORNING, N. Y., July 4.---Train No. 9, the regular train of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, which leaves Hoboken nightly at 9 o'clock and is due here at 4:47 o'clock the next morning, was halted near Gibson, a small town three miles east of here, shortly after 5 o'clock this morning. In front of it was a freight train, stalled on the steep incline to Gibson, by the pulling out of a drawhead. An engine from the passenger train-two had been put on to surmount the grade at Groveland with a heavy excursion crowd bound for Buffalo and Niagara Falls---was detached and was striving to push the heavy freight train ahead to a siding, when the rails began to sing with the hum of an approaching train.

Most of the passengers aboard No. 9 were asleep. Some few were dressed and out on the track watching the removal of the freight train. Through the heavy mist, which was crawling up the mountain from the Chemung River far below these few passengers presently saw a glaring headlight sweep around the curve a few hundred feet back of their train, a curve which ends a straight stretch of track ten or more miles, along which every train of the division flies at topmost speed. The watching passengers had scarce time to scramble down the bank beside the track. Then the locomotive of United States Express Train 11, with ten heavy express cars behind it, crashed into the rear of a day coach, which, with one other directly ahead of it, formed the end of No. 9. Ahead of these were three Pullmans, a baggage car, and the engine and tender.

As if they had been made of cardboard, the day coaches parted down the middle, half of each toppling over on either side of the track, and the monster engine, 100 tons of steel, which an instant before had been moving at sixty-five miles an hour, cut into the rear steel Pullman, crumpled it up as if it had been a tin can and came to a halt in the midst of this wreckage.

In the debris lay forty-one persons instantly killed or so injured that they died soon afterward. Between fifty and sixty others were pinned injured in the wreckage. The lists of the dead and injured in this worst disaster in years on the Lackawanna, which had previously had only two persons killed by train accidents since 1900, are as follows:

The New York Times, New York, NY 5 Jul 1912



http://www.gendisasters.com/new-york/6908/gibson-ny-train-wreck-jul-1912



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