Meriden, Connecticut, USA
1913 - SCARE ON NEW HAVEN ENGINE JUMPS TRACK - Cars Enveloped in Steam, but Passengers Escape Injury - Driving Rods Broke.

Special to The New York Times.

MERIDEN, Conn., July 18. - The eastbound express train on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, which left New York at 5 o'clock this afternoon, was wrecked a mile west of Meriden at 7:10 o'clock to-night, when the big Pacific type locomotive left the rails and one of them had been sent flying through telegraph wires at the side of the track.

While no one was injured and only the locomotive left the rails, nearly all the passengers in the three Pullman sleeping cars and three day coaches making up the train, were badly scared. There was a stampede to get out of the train at the first shock due to the application of the emergency brakes...

Every passenger deserted the train within a minute after it had come to a standstill. After walking a mile up the tracks to the Meriden station they were sent forward on local trains toward Boston...

The train stopped after the locomotive had torn up the rails and ties for a distance of twenty feet. It was found that the mechanism operating the block signal system had been torn out and that the signals had ceased to work. For that reason men were sent 2,000 feet to the rear of the train with torches and torpedoes. They stopped four trains one after another, which came up to the stalled train, only to be ordered back to take a cross-over switch, a mile further west.

A wrecking train which arrived from New Haven pulled the cars away from the locomotive, but found its derrick equipment insufficient to lift the heavy locomotive... At midnight one track was still blocked, while the wrecking crew sought vainly to get the engine back on the track. Regular trains, operating over the southbound track, were running from an hour to three hours late.

The New York Times
New York, New York
July 19, 1913

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