Everyone has heard or knows about the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster of 1876. A PBS telivision documentary film is currently in the works on this train disaster. For those interested see the website:

http://www.engineeringtragedy.com

Since i've alway's been interested in this and the wreck site is only a 2 hr. drive away i've been going there for the past 10 years,and have searched for artifacts in the river there, and have collected old photographs of the disaster and photo's of the bridge prior and afterwards. This past spring i contacted Len Brown who is working on the film and who also has the website and i've become a member of the group.

Alot of material has been gathered and researched over the years and the first book The Ashtabula Disaster by the Rev. Stephen Peet came out in 1877. A book called Bliss & Tragedy came out around 2002 authored by several local historians with more on the bridge design and flaws, the Charles Collins suicide/ with autopsy reports pointing to murder ect. For me i find it all interesting. As with anything there is human error with inaccuracies of the death toll, train consist ect. in some of the earlier reports and recollections and articles done in older RR magazines and some books that have brief photo's and mentions of the wreck.

One of the questions many of us have dicussed has to do with the actual westbound LS&MS Ry. train and the bridge. It was pulled by 2 locomotives,the lead #156 Socrates wich made it safely across the bridge with its tender derailing only because of the coupling pin or coupling rod breaking bewteen it and the 2nd locomotive #360 the Columbia. At the time when the bridge gave way and started to fall when the coupling broke between the 2 locomotives, the engine Columbia/and tender and the first 2 express cars were on the actual bridge.

Off to the east of the bridge following in the consist were 2 baggage cars, then 2 day coaches, a smoking car, a drawing room car "Yokohoma" the sleeper "Palatine" , the sleeper " City of Buffalo" and last the sleeper " Osceo" There were 11 cars total in the train consist.

We know the train had link & pin couplers, we also know from a 1876 LS&MS annual report that year that all LS&MS passenger train cars were equipped with Westinghouse brakes that year.

Here's the question: with 9 cars not even on the bridge when it started to fall when the train was going approx. 5mph and the brakes were being applied on the train just prior for the prepared stop at the depot located just west of the bridge a few hundred yards away, shouldn't the Westinghouse air brakes equipped on the cars have went into emergency somewhat holding the rear of the train in place if the train parted? or would the weight of the engine tender, 2 head cars going down with the bridge and the link & pin couplers drag the whole train down into the chasm like pulling a long weighted chain? We know the last 4 cars were the bigger & longer palace type cars with tri-axle trucks.

What are anyone elses thought's on this? In some of the wreckage photo's you can see the air brake lines on the remains of 2 of the palace cars that ended upside down.

Thank's for any insight or additional thoughts on this!

This is mentioned in Robert Reed's book on train wrecks, isn't it?
Are there tracks still being used on the replacement bridge today?

Yes, on page 29. There is a period lithograph at the top of the page showing the locomotive Columbia and other wreck before and after pictures however the caption under it us only 1/2 correct when it mentions the 2 enginemen in the photo. The photo on left is of the Columbia's engineer Gustav "Pap" Folsom. the gentleman on the right however is P.P. Bliss who was a noted evangelist of the time he was a passenger who perished on the train with his wife Lucy.

Pap's fireman was Peter Levenbroe who died a week after the wreck from injuries. The engineer of the Socrates #156 wich made it safely across was Daniel McGuire.

In reading about the wreck, my first impression was that the force of the cars falling into the chasm pulled the trailing cars forward so they too fell one by one as you mention. However, I had not considered that the train had automatic air brakes. Considering that fact, I would speculate that the falling weight of the cars was simply more than enough to offset the resistance of the brakes. Just generally speaking, I would think that the weight of a car would be far greater than the resistance of dragging it with brakes applied.

Of course just one or two falling cars would have had to drag seven cars still on the rails. But it probably took some seconds for their brakes to fully apply. Their may have even been some acceleration as the first cars fell. So I would say the outcome may have just been a matter of all the elements coming together at just the right time. If there had been say 10-20 cars still on the rails as the first cars fell, those trailing cars might not have gone over. The trailing cars might have stalled under braking, and a coupler near the chasm might have broke due to the weight of the falling cars and the resistance of the cars still on the rails.

In 1910 George Westinghouse was the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He was ask to present a paper on the history of the air brake, which he did. I believe he was the speaker at the banquet at the annual convention. I have read the paper and he is very specific with dates and types of equipment. If you can get this paper and read it you might be able to determine more precisely what kind do air brake was actually available when the wreck occurred. The paper was reprinted by WABCo and if you go onto the popular used book sites and search with George Westinghouse as the author you should have no trouble finding a copy.

At the first Burlington tests, the Westinghouse air brake was a failure. But the results of the testing let George figure out what the problem was. Automatic air brakes would have to use air wave propagation, not pressure drop, to control the triple valves. This was an easy step for Westinghouse since they were already using this technology for the air signal. Any air brake system in use prior to the second Burlington tests would not have been the effective air brake system we are use to today.

I haven't had time to track the exact dates down, but a bit of poking around with Google brings up a time frame for the "Burlington tests" that is about a decade after the wreck in question. I think if one were to research the Westinghouse patent dates, one would find the air brakes in service at the time of the wreck were of the straight air variety, in which case they were worthless as soon as the train line parted.

Yes, the Burlington tests were some ten years later:

http://books.google.com/books?id=2fh0H0 ... ts&f=false

This patent list suggests that Westinghouse was aware of the shortcomings of straight air systems, and was working on this at least as early as 1872; the first patent for the triple valve is in 1873. Patents, however, do not translate into hardware immediately, and hardware isn't always applied timely.

http://www.patent-invent.com/air_brake_patent.html

You mention searching for remaining debris from the actual event. Have you recovered any, and what is the nature of the artifacts?

Richard, If you go to the Engineering Tragedy website link listed in my initial post there is a link for "Aritfacts" on the main page wich will give you a look and an idea of some of the things found there.

After the wreck everything bridge part and train related was hauled away to the LS&MS Collinwood yard. If you look at the old bridge disaster pictures some of wich are also shown on the Engineering Tragedy website you will see it was nothing but a mass of twisted bridge iron and RR car parts in a heap, many parts were distorted and bent from the heat. About the only thing recognizable train wise is the overtuned locomotive Columbia with smashed cab, the train coach wheels/axles truck parts, bent truss rods, air lines and one lone rear platform railing with brakewheel.

The engine Columbia was retieved, the first attempt hauling it up ended with it breaking loose and crashing down the embankment back into the river. There is a photo of it laying on the bank in the river after that attempt. It was later hauled up again,hauled away and rebuilt, then returned to service.

There doesn't seem to be many large iron parts left that were found especially from the fallen bridge other than some cross member brackets and a few broken bolts or nuts. Train part wise some broken iron parts have been found. David Tobias and i have both found a good share of link & pins, actually way more than what would have even been used on that 11 car train and more like about 3 trains worth! With those it's hard to tell and we'll probably never know wich ones may have been from the actual train that fell.

Today one would hardly recognize the wreck site as being the same place as it has changed drastically since the disaster, especially in 1904 when a new large concrete double arch culvert type bridge with high earthen fill on top was built.

Is this the accident where some believe that the there was a derailed car before the train went onto the bridge and this contributed to the bridge collapse? The derailment was blamed on multiple gauge wheels on one of the passenger cars. The high death toll was blamed on liquid fuel lamps causing immediate multiple fires in the debris.

David,

I think you are referring to the 1867 Angola wreck, the cause of which invovled compromise wheels for multiple gages.

Here is a description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola_Horror

David, Yes you are refering to the 1867 Angola Horror wreck. That also happened on a pre Lake Shore Ry. line in New York state. It involved the derailing of the last 2 coaches on the bridge over Big Sister Creek, one of the coaches had those wheelsets that you described,both coaches fell down the sides of the embankments at the east end of the bridge and caught fire.

There is a new book that just came out called "The Angola Horror" by Charity Vogel that is available at bookstores and on Ebay. I bought a copy and was pleased with the way the author researched the wreck of the events leading up to it and afterwards.

According to White’s book The American Freight Car, in 1872-73 Westinghouse developed the fail safe air brake that continued to function even if the train broke in two, and this was immediately applied to passenger trains.

This failsafe feature was an improvement in the art of several earlier inventors of air brakes. However, railroads were reluctant to apply the Westinghouse brake to freight trains because of the enormous numbers of cars involved. And also, application to freight also called for a different system that would work with the far greater number of cars in freight trains compared to passenger trains.

So development for freight application continued up to the point where the freight train airbrake was finally manufactured in the late 1880s, and mandated in 1893.

Are we certain the cars in the train had link and pin couplers? By 1876, most of the major railroads in the U.S. had equipped their passenger cars with the so-called "Miller platform" hook couplers. John White's book on passenger cars has several pages on the Miller couplers, and says the PRR was the only major railroad to not adopt them.

-- Rick Bates

Rick, Now that you brought this up about the Miller platform hook couplers i guess were are now not certain the train had link & pin couplers. With the amount of link & pins we've found at the bridge site and the way severeral were bent and broke i personally had assumed some must have come from the train? If not then i guess the river was a dumping ground for unwanted RR iron like some other sites.

So, if the train had these so called Miller platform hook couplers, and as the cars were being pulled into the chasm with the falling bridge with loco and 2 head cars, and as they were dropping downward wouldn't the hooks have come apart at least leaving some of the cars on the rail east of the bridge?

I don't have a copy of the Whites passenger cars, guess i need to get one asap. I did find a link on the web for the Miller platform hook couplers from Mid-Continent railway Museum " A Car Builders Dictionary" with some diagrams of it.

Thank you very much for the input on the Miller platform hook couplers!