Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/77

 62 blast) and jumped. The engines smashed into each other and when the dust settled, the tender of the Norwood was mounted on top of the Montauk, and the smoking coach and baggage car on the Bushwick train were telescoped twelve feet into each other. One or two other passenger cars were unbroken, but their platforms were crushed. Here occurred the worst loss of life. In all, nine persons were killed, the firemen of both trains and those standing outside on the platforms.

The inquest developed some interesting facts about conditions on the Southern RR. The Poppenhusens had removed the telegraph office at Woodsburgh in the course of lengthening the turnout there 100 feet. They had also done little or nothing on track maintenance on the Rockaway Branch. The rails had no "patent" connections (probably fish plates) but were joined by old-fashioned chair fastenings the spiking of which was often loose. A team of reporters walked the roadbed and reported that the rails were often worn and occasionally split, and that fully half the ties were rotten with only occasional good ones. The impression was given that everything of the best went to the Central RR of L.I. and that the Southern RR got what was left. The inquest verdict blamed the Lawrence wreck on the two conductors, both of whom were running on time not belonging to them. The railroad was censured for having only two brakemen on a seven-car train, for altering the time-table on a holiday, and for bad maintenance. Significantly, the railroad restored the Woodsburgh telegraph station within three weeks.

As proof of the rotten condition of the roadbed, another train on July 13, consisting of an engine and seven cars, was thrown on the sand by spreading rails at a point one mile west of Far Rockaway, and after bumping along on the ties, jogged to a stop. The locomotive plunged down a five foot embankment, the tender followed, and the baggage car, smashing past, sprawled across the rails at right angles to the line. No one was hurt and the coaches were undamaged, but it was another grim reminder that all was not well on the line. Much of the travel thereafter took to the rival Long Island RR, people shunning the Southern road as a death trap.

The Rockaway wreck had an unexpected side effect. The Southern RR, which had seriously contemplated pushing eastward from Patchogue toward Moriches, and had even begun