Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/90

 74 near West Flushing (Corona) on a descending grade running at a speed of nearly 30 MPH and the train stopped dead in thirty seconds within a distance of 600 feet. Again between College Point and Whitestone a second trial was made; here the passengers left the cars to observe the application of the brakes themselves. The train backed up about a mile and then rushed past the spectators at 30 MPH. Again the whole train was stopped within its own length of 600 feet. The trials were several times repeated on the return trip with pronounced success, the longest time for response being thirty seconds and with no jar or jerk being perceptible. After this exhaustive test all the trains on the road were fitted with the steam brake, and it was advertised as one of the features of the road.

Thanks to all the safety features on the road, the list of accidents on the Flushing & North Side R.R. is remarkably small. In July 1869 the road sustained its first casualty, a woman passenger who, while walking on the platform of one of the coaches, lost her footing when the wheels lurched and was killed under the wheels. In September 1872 a train pulling into Long Island City collided with a number of passenger cars but no one was hurt.

The road's biggest and most spectacular mishap occurred on a winter evening in December 1870. The night of the thirteenth was dark, thick and disagreeable. The 6 P.M. train for Great Neck, consisting of the engine Whitestone, two passenger coaches and a smoking car, pulled out as usual from Hunter's Point. At 6:12 it passed the down train on the siding at Winfield. As the train left Whitestone Junction on the meadows, it slowed down to 20 MPH on the pilework leading to the draw which lay about 700 feet ahead. As the engine came to within fifty feet of the bridge, and the beam of the headlight illuminated the timbers, the engineer was horrified to see that the draw was wide open. Recovering fronfrom [sic] his fright, he blew "down brakes," one short sharp blast. It was too late. In moments the speed of the engine carried it over the water and into the opposite abutment. As it oveturnedoverturned [sic] into the waters of the creek, it dragged down with it the tender, which landed almost upright in the water, and in turn half dragged behind it the smoking car which came to rest against the center pier.

Remarkably enough, neither the fireman nor the engineer