Jeannette's Creek train wreck

The railway accident at Baptiste Creek was the collision between an express on a construction train on 27 October 1854 in the vicinity of the station Baptiste Creek, today: Jeannette's Creek in Chatham -Kent, Ontario, Canada, on the Great Western Railway from Niagara Falls to Windsor was traveling. 52 deaths were the result.

Starting position

The express train had left if on the eve of accident Day Niagara. It consisted of a steam locomotive with a tender, then two cars of second class carriage and four cars of the first class. At the end ran two baggage cars. Move the train gathered through a series of adversity to a delay of seven hours.

In Baptiste Creek station a construction train was provided on a fast track, which consisted of a locomotive and 15 freight cars loaded with gravel and waiting to be used after passing of the last train for a repair on the track bed. It was foggy.

Accident

After the dispatcher of the railway station Baptiste Creek had the engineer of Bauzuges erroneously confirmed that the track is free, because of the express train had already happened, this pushed the construction train backwards at 15 to 20 km / h on the main track. The express train suddenly appeared out of the fog and crashed with travel speed on the gravel car. These were very heavily loaded and therefore had a considerable inertia. The energy of the impact was therefore largely offset by the fact that the predominantly built of wood passenger cars were smashed. The two front running to second class and the first half of first-class carriage were completely destroyed.

Follow

It was the heaviest up to that railway accident in North America. 52 people died, 48 (according to another source: 60) were injured. A significant proportion of passengers killed were German emigrants on their way to the United States.